Elementary
by Haleine Delail
Summary: A virus is breaking out all over the world, and leave it to the Doctor and Martha Jones to find out what's causing it. But when they learn the source and the elementary nature of the virus, will they be able to avoid becoming afflicted themselves?
1. Chapter 1

**_AND WE'RE BACK!_**

**_THIS PICKS UP WHERE MISS OBENG LEFT OFF: THE DOCTOR AND MARTHA FRESH FROM A TWO-DAY SHAGFEST, NOW COOLING THEIR HEELS ON A BEACH IN TAHITI! THEY WERE HOPING FOR A VACATION, BUT NO SUCH LUCK..._**

* * *

ONE

This was not fair, not fair at all. They had asked for fourteen days, what they'd got was forty-eight hours. They had done their waiting! They had paid their dues! They had endured six weeks in the 1960's through a bitter London winter with aliens trying to eat them and a stubborn fourteen-year-old threatening to turn time on its ear. They had been lost without their vessel, and worse, lost without each other on their way to this holiday. And all they asked in return was two weeks – a fortnight of quiet rest and repose (maybe with some snorkeling and a bit of shagging thrown in) with no planets in peril, no malevolent aliens, no dimensional barriers turning their friends into monsters…

But no. Trouble followed the Doctor, and when that happened, the Doctor followed trouble.

They were just settling into their day on a Tahitian beach with Mai Tais and beautiful bodies emerging from an emerald sea, when across the resort area, a crowd of people began fleeing from the Sofitel Resort hotel, screaming in almighty fear.

Martha and the Doctor looked at each other.

"Well, it was fun while it lasted," he said. They clinked their glasses together, each took a sip, and then, hand-in-hand, they ran toward the screaming.

As different patches of sand momentarily squeezed between their toes, Martha asked, "Have you noticed how often we are running _toward_ the screaming, while everyone else is running away?"

"Going on nine hundred and three years now," he called to her.

"Are we daft or just brave?" she wondered.

"A bit of both, I should think," he answered.

The Doctor held tightly to her hand as he led the way through the crowd, shouldering past the frightened and panicking mob. The lobby was littered with wicker and suede armchairs overturned, matching coffee tables broken and white sofas with all manner of drink spills and footprints. A few people were wandering out of the swimming pool area on the left with their drinks still in hand, watching the chaos confusedly.

"What is go on?" asked one very large man with a heavy Russian accent. "Why the people scream?"

"I don't know," the Doctor told him. "But I'd suggest you all follow them out the door and away from whatever it is that's making them scream."

An Asian man in a flowered shirt appeared from behind the Doctor. "Actually sir," he said. "I am the manager here, and I am advising that all guests stay put."

"Really? Well, that went well, didn't it?" asked the Doctor, indicating the mob of people who had recently left the building in a fit of screaming mayhem.

"All further guests," he corrected, stuttering a bit. "All additional guests, I mean. I'm sorry, who exactly are you?"

The Doctor, though he was currently dressed in brown pin-striped nylon swimming trunks and nothing else, pulled his psychic paper from a pocket. "John Smith, Resort Hotel Safety Inspector," he answered.

The manager lifted one eyebrow. "Shouldn't you be checking the kitchen for salmonella and poisoned blowfish?"

"Sure, if all we had to contend with was contaminated food," the Doctor answered, shoving the paper back in his pocket. "But clearly we have other disasters on our hands, don't we? That's me – I'm in the… disaster division."

The man crossed his arms over his chest and looked at Martha. "And you? Are you in the disaster division as well?"

"Y-yes," she answered, feigning authority. "I'm Mr. Smith's secretary."

"Mmm-hm," the man sniffed, looking her up and down. "You don't exactly dress like the rest of the desk set."

She looked down at her outfit. She was wearing a turquoise bikini with white string trim. The top was little more than two triangles of fabric, and the valley between her breasts was spanned only by an inch's worth of white string. The bottoms were similarly skimpy, held together by two white bows tied at her hip bones. A white hibiscus flower ornamented the backside. When she'd put it on this morning, she had thought it the perfect outfit for a Tahitian romp with the Doctor. Now, their Tahitian romp was shaping up to be more like the rest of their romps, and she was regretting her decision not to grab at least a sarong before leaving their hotel room.

"Oi!" she shot back. "You're dressed like Magnum P.I., not a hotel manager, so let's not cast stones, eh?"

"Right then," the Doctor said, trying hard to change the subject. "That's out of the way, now, so why don't you tell us your name and what's happened?"

"Fine," the man said grudgingly. "My name is Teina Puaki. And this? This started a couple minutes ago in the Oh Bar."

"The Oh Bar?" asked the Doctor.

"Yes, the oxygen bar."

"People still do that?" asked Martha. "I thought that had gone out of style."

"No, not here," Teina responded scornfully. "Here, people still understand the benefits of pure oxygen to the body."

"Yeah, it gets you high," she answered.

"Anyway," he said. "I didn't see what happened inside, but suddenly, people started screaming and running out of there. And then, people started running of the wet bar area, which is out back…"

"And that's when you locked down and advised everyone else not to move?" asked the Doctor.

"Yes," Teina said.

"All right," the Doctor said. "Fair enough. Although, this lot, I think they should leave." He indicated the Russian man and the others who were still standing in the doorway to the pool area. Teina Puaki simply nodded and gestured for his guests to file out the front door of the hotel. Some of the guests nodded and/or said thanks as they passed.

"What do you think, Mr. Smith?" asked Teina. "What should we do?"

"My assistant and I are going into the Oh Bar," the Doctor told him. "You are going to stay here in the lobby and direct traffic. Send any stragglers outside, send anyone who's seen anything to me."

"Okay. The Oh Bar is down that hall to the left," Teina said, indicating a long hallway across the lobby. "The door at the back connects with the wet bar. I assume that whatever it is came through that door at some point."

"Thanks," the Doctor said, taking Martha's hand. "We'll let you know what we find."

As they walked away, Martha whispered, "We will?"

"If it suits us, sure," he answered. "Oh, and by the way… my secretary?" He grinned giddily.

"Well," she shrugged. "Perhaps your _personal_ secretary."

"Yeah, that covers it."

They found a long fogged glass wall, in the middle of which was a sliding glass door labeled "Oh Bar" in a plain blue font. They walked inside a huge white room with five long counters. The place was meant to be soft, clean and inviting, the bars curved and flowing, the stools cushioned with microfibre. There wasn't a right angle in the entire place. In front of each stool, there was an oxygen mask emerging from the counter by clear tubes.

Martha fingered one of the masks and sighed, "This is so weird."

"Mm," the Doctor answered, looking around.

"Do you see anything out of place?" she asked.

"Not yet," he said. "But the day is still young."

He moved round to the back side of one of the bars. Each one had three panels. He opened one of them. He extracted a large, round tank. He ran his fingers over a label, and reading the label, whispered the words "_Oxygène purifié à Papeete._"

"What did you say?" Martha asked, absently moving to put one of the masks over her face.

"Don't do that," he said. "We don't know anything about this situation. I don't think it's wise to be breathing the drug in the very place where the trouble started."

"Sorry," she said, eyes wide, setting the mask down and exaggeratedly backing away.

"Still," he mused. "This says the oxygene gets distilled in Papeete, which is just up the coast a bit. It's probably safe if they're bottling it in Tahiti for distribution in Tahiti. But, it wouldn't hurt to have a look."

He set the tank on the counter and extracted the sonic.

"You brought that, and the psychic paper, to the beach with you?" she asked.

"Aren't you glad?"

"Yeah, but what did you think was going to happen?" she wondered.

"Nothing. But it's good to be prepared." He disconnected the tubing from the tank and held the sonic over the valve as pure oxygen escaped from the tank. "It's contaminated."

"By what?" she asked.

"I can't tell," he said.

"Something extraterrestrial?"

"Probably," he said. "Unfortunately, I don't have anything to trap a sample in. But the big question is, what happened to whoever was in here while it was happening?" He put the sonic back in his pocket and looked about, hands on hips.

"Well, he said something about that door there," she told him. "Shall we check?"

He nodded and began to walk toward another fogged sliding glass door. The words "Oh Bar" were on that door as well, though from the inside, they looked backwards. They stepped outside into the humid sunlight again.

What they found was a narrow tributary of blue ocean, curving into a canopied area of the hotel. Their bare feet protested against the red-hot concrete. On their right, there was a bar built into the pool, the full array of alcoholic beverages climbing up an artificial rock wall beneath a separate wooden canopy. Across the wet area, there was another bar, identical. To the right of that second bar, another kind of service alcove loomed, bigger, up higher and out of the water.

When Martha looked closely, she could see a man behind the opposite bar. He was wearing a panama hat and no shirt. He was pressing his back up against one of the artificial rock walls inside the bar, and she could just barely hear him making frightened noises as he stared at the bigger counter.

"Doctor," she whispered, gesturing toward him.

As they walked toward him, they could hear noises coming from the direction where he was looking. They ran out of concrete, and Martha lowered herself into the water, and the Doctor followed suit. The water was chest-high to her, and they made their way, half-walking, half-swimming, toward the man.

"Oi," Martha whispered. "What's going on over there?"

The man was surprised to see them, but then went back to staring at where the noises came from. "I don't know." His voice conveyed fright. "I just heard screaming coming from the oxygen bar, and then these… _things_ came out of there and headed straight over to the sushi counter, and everyone ran screaming from here as well."

"Why didn't you?" asked the Doctor.

"Too stunned."

"Right, well, shall we get you out of here?"

The man nodded subtly. He came around to the outside where Martha and the Doctor were standing.

Martha whispered, "Whatever they are, we'll hold them off until you get out. Go through the Oh Bar – we've already checked it, and it's clean."

The man nodded again and climbed out of the water where the cement began. He ran into the building and disappeared. He hadn't bothered to ask who they were, what they were doing, how they expected to get past whatever awful things were making the racket in the sushi bar. He'd just wanted to get the hell away.

They made their way through the water to the bottom of some stairs. The Doctor climbed them first, emerging from the water once more, with Martha following. They went up about ten steps, and found themselves on a dry wooden floor under a canopy, with chairs and tables overturned all around. Behind the sushi bar, the noises were quite loud. They sounded like snarling, smacking.

The Doctor approached the counter and peeked over. All at once, the noises of snarling and smacking stopped, and the sounds of anger began. He retreated from the counter, careful not to trip over any chairs or tables. A man crawled over the counter on all-fours, scratching at the air, hissing at the Doctor and Martha. He was wearing blue and black swimming trunks and a pair of rubber sandals. A second person came over the counter, a blonde woman in a pink two-piece bathing costume, and then a third. And then a fourth. In all, twelve people crawled over the bar, some of them in swimwear, some of them in sundresses or flowered shirts or Ralph Lauren gear – all of them dressed for Tahiti, but all of them vicious and advancing.

And something else. They all had plasticky-red faces and their eyes had gone completely black – no whites, no irises, no pupils. A few of them had food dangling from their mouths, mostly raw fish, but some of them had got into the vinegared rice.

"Martha?" the Doctor said, walking slowly backward.

"Yes?" she said, following. She fumbled for his hand, and they enlaced their fingers and grasped each other for life.

"Run!"


	2. Chapter 2

TWO

The Doctor pulled the heavy door shut and sonicked it. "You all right?" he asked, taking Martha by the upper arms. "I'm sorry I dragged you down so hard."

She leaned against him and they took a moment to embrace, following the brisk chase that had taken them over the banister at the sushi bar and sliding down the jagged, artificial rocks below, through the wet bar, through the lobby and up the stairs into the seven floors of hotel rooms. "It's all right," she said. "I'm fine. Just a few scratches."

"Let me see."

She turned, and he could see that the back sides of both her thighs were riddled with scrapes. Small amounts of blood oozed from the little wounds. He touched her right thigh, and she winced, drawing air in through her teeth.

"It looks sort of nasty. We'd better at least disinfect," he decided.

"It's probably fine," she said, turning back around. "Those rocks are fake anyway."

"That doesn't mean they don't harbour all manner of disease-causing bacteria," he insisted. "We're going back to the TARDIS."

He took her hand once again and headed purposefully down the corridor toward the lift.

"What about that lot?" she asked. "They can't just stay in there forever. They'll find a way out."

"Right," he said, stopping. He spied a room service cart at the other end of the hallway. He jogged down the hall to fetch it, and then sonicked open the door that he had just sonicked shut. Martha watched as he shoved the cart into the room, and the twelve red-faced human-animals fell upon what looked like a pot roast, a big serving bowl of potatoes and a basket of fruit. The Doctor aimed the sonic across the room while the creatures were distracted and locked the windows so that they could not escape. He sonic-locked the door once more and smiled. "There. That'll buy us some time."

"What do we do with them?" she asked as they began to move down the hall again.

"Looks like a virus has got them," he told her. "Most likely, they contracted it from the contaminated oxygen tanks. We just have to work out what's contaminating them, and then find an antidote. Or create one."

"Cool," she chirped. "Something I might actually be able to help with."

"What?" he asked, his voice having risen two octaves. "You help all the time."

"Yeah, but hardly ever with stuff I actually know something about," she pointed out. "Usually, you just tell me what to do and I do it. Or, I get eaten, and you save me."

"There is that," he conceded as the lift door opened.

"Thing is," she said. "I don't know of any virus that could cause a person's face to turn red like that, or their eyes to turn black."

"Nor me, at least not a human one," he admitted as the car went down. "You asked if it was extraterrestrial. Looks like it's time to start investigating."

She sighed. "All I wanted was two weeks. Even the Prime Minister takes a holiday!"

"Well," he offered. "We could walk away."

"Point taken," she said, smiling reluctantly. She leaned in once more, and they shared a quick kiss before the lift doors opened on the ground floor.

Teina Puaki was standing in the lobby with a team of men in medic uniforms.

"What the hell happened?" he wanted to know.

"Are you still here?" asked the Doctor.

"When I saw you running through the lobby, you told me to stay put, so I did," he answered, confused like a child.

"Good man," the Doctor said. "Who are you lot?"

One of the medics stepped forward. He was a large, solid man with a buzz haircut and arms the size of tree trunks. "We answered an emergency evacuation call. What's happened?"

"Listen," the Doctor warned. "I've got twelve afflicted individuals locked in room 702. _Do not go up there._ Whatever those people have got, you don't want it."

"Is it a virus?" he asked.

"Likely," the Doctor answered. "But it's nothing I've ever seen before."

"I thought you said you were a hotel safety inspector," Teina commented. "What do you know about viruses?"

"I lied," the Doctor confessed curtly. "I'm a doctor."

"And so am I," Martha chimed in. "And those people could be contagious. Just leave them alone."

"What are the symptoms?" asked one of the uniformed men.

The Doctor answered, "Facial discoloration, severe dilation of the pupils, vicious, animal-like behaviour. I'm telling you, just leave them where they are until we know more, all right?"

"Well, we need to get them away from the general public," the man protested. "We can't just have them holed up in some hotel room. What if they get out?"

"They won't get out."

"It's just a door. There is _a door_ between the public and these infected individuals? That's not enough. If they're behaving like animals, they might break down the door..."

The Doctor's anger flared. He was so tired of stubborn humans, constantly questioning him, contradicting him, getting themselves into fixes that they could simply avoid. "Now look! Your life, and the lives of hundreds of others, may depend on this! _I'm ordering you to keep them locked up until you hear from me! _Have you got that?"

The man hesitated. "You don't have the authority," he crossed his arms in defiance.

"I'm the Doctor," the Time Lord growled. "I have every authority."

* * *

"I imagine it's a bit difficult to take me seriously when I'm not wearing shirt," he speculated, pulling Martha behind him down a dark corridor in the bowels of the hotel where they were staying.

"I like you without a shirt," she offered. "I take you very seriously."

"Thanks. But really. They don't know anything about this virus... if that's even what it is. You'd think they'd be glad of a little guidance."

"When will you learn, Doctor? Humans think we know everything, what's best for everyone. Especially humans like him."

"Big beefy bonehead," the Doctor muttered.

They found the narrow side-hallway where the TARDIS was parked, and went inside. "I assume we're going to the infirmary," she asked, stopping at the top of the ramp and looking back at him.

"Ordinarily I'd tell you to undress and wait for me there," he said, stopping to admire the turquoise bikini. "But..."

"I still can," she smiled.

He smiled back. "I just need access to your little scrapes. I think I'll have easy access either way."

She giggled. "If you're going to lob them right to me, it's no fun to make lewd innuendos. Give me a hard one."

His face lit up and he scoffed. Loudly. "Ho, ho! Lob two!"

They both laughed and headed across the console room down the corridor to the infirmary.

Martha stretched out on the exam table, face-down, and rested her head on her forearms. She closed her eyes and relaxed – she felt she was in good hands. The Doctor banged around in some cabinets, and finally emerged holding a spray can and a pot of cream, with a roll of gauze and some surgical tape. He pulled up a stool and examined the back sides of Martha's legs. She was scraped up pretty badly, having jumped from the sushi bar balcony down onto the artificial (cement) rock and having slid down on her bum into the saltwater. She was actually worse off than he'd realised – his initial inspection in the hotel hallway had not been in full light and hadn't really given him a clue. She had a couple of places where she was almost sure to scar, and one place where there was actually a tiny piece of skin hanging off. Given how much of her flesh was actually displaced, he was surprised she hadn't screamed when she hit the water and the salt had got in her wounds. It was probably the adrenaline keeping her going, and not heeding the pain.

He was unable to keep himself from saying "Mmmrrr," as he looked at the damage, and Martha looked up at him suddenly with alarm.

"What?"

"It's nothing," he assured her. "It's just cutting a little deeper than I'd realised. I'm surprised you're not in more pain."

"Oh, I'm in pain," she said. "I'm just choosing to believe that I'm someplace else. Like... on the planet Fadsnell, watching the Silaero Baroura, bursting colours in the air, showers of golden light, making love in the – ow!"

"Sorry."

"What is that?" she asked, breathless. "That _really_ stings!"

"I'm sorry, Martha," he said. He stood back, pursed his lips and blew on her wounds with cool air. "It's a bacteria burner."

"How's that?"

"It's a little more advanced, as far as anti-bacterial spray goes."

"A bit of warning would have been nice."

"But you were on Fadsnell. I figured it was as good a time as any."

She buried her head under her forearms and moaned a bit as the spray did its job. She asked a muffled question into the cushion of the exam table. "Esha re banin da ateera?"

"Yes, it's really burning the bacteria. I know it's hot, but it'll pass in about thirty more seconds. Just be a bit patient... I don't want you to be carrying around anything that will make you more susceptible to disease, not with this red-face thing happening outside."

"Speaking of which," she chimed in, happy to have something else to think about. "Are you going to try to find out what's in those tanks?"

"I was planning on it. After I'm done here, I'll go back there and try to smuggle one of them back here. The TARDIS should be able to tell me what's mixed in with the oxygen."

"Mind if I just rest here?"

"I'd insist upon it. How's the burning?"

"Still burning."

He put his hands on the sides of her thighs, just below the hips, and sure enough, even the healthy skin was hot to the touch. He blew on the bloodied skin some more, hoping to ease the heat just for the bit of time it would take for the burning to subside.

Finally, Martha seemed to relax. "Is it over?" he asked.

"Yes."

"Okay. I'm going to mop up the blood a bit, then I'll bandage you up. You'll have some scarring, sorry. Won't be too bad, though."

"Damn, there goes my lucrative career as a bikini model."

He began to dab the bleeding skin gently with soft gauze. "Don't worry. This is not a backside easily diminished," he said, smirking. "What's a bit of a scar when you've begun with perfection?"

She giggled. "That was very poetic."

"I like to think of myself as a Longfellow," he said, still smirking.

"Oh, another lob!"

He bandaged her scrapes, coating the inside of the gauze with icy cream (also a bit advanced, and guaranteed to dull the pain for as long as contact was maintained), and careful not to place any adhesive over the wounds. Then he helped her up onto her knees and off the table, without having her sit, or put pressure on her backside. But as the icy cream set in, Martha oohed and aahed over its effects and wondered why human medical science was not in-the-know.

"Because it's alien technology," he told her. "You lot won't be ready to accept that for another couple hundred years."

"What are you going to do now?" she asked.

"I'm going to get an oxygen tank. You?"

"I'll be in the TV room. Any chance I could watch television while in suspended animation?"

"The TARDIS can do lots of things," he said, pulling a disappointed face. "Unfortunately, that's not one of them. I'm afraid you're stuck with the sofa."

"Okay, I'm going to go change, but after that, it's sofa time."

"I'll come with."

They walked to their bedroom together, and the Doctor pulled a white tee-shirt out of a drawer and pulled it over his head. He put on one of a million pairs of sandals, then kissed Martha and promised to see her in an hour.

On his way out the door, he asked, "Where's your mobile? I'll take it, just in case."

"Oh, bollocks," she cursed. "It's still in my pink bag on the beach. I hope it's still there, anyway."

"I'll find it. Bye."

Martha peeled off her bikini and climbed into a grey cotton spaghetti-strapped dress. She didn't bother putting on her knickers – she didn't want to upset her bandaging. She contented herself in the loose, breathable fabric, and briefly wondered why it was always _she_ who got her ribs fractured by feral girls, and _she_ who got zapped by stone angels. The Doctor had jumped off that sushi balcony as she had – why wasn't _his_ bum scraped into mince?

She sighed as, once again, she decided it was worth it, and headed down the corridor to relax. She settled into the sofa on her stomach, and flipped on the television. The TARDIS, of course, received every channel known to mankind (and unknown to mankind), so she simply _asked it_ to tune her into a BBC News channel.

The usual – tumult in the Middle East, the U.S. President had said something half-offensive, half-amusing, her football team was losing again...

After the sport report, however, something decidedly unusual came on. She fumbled for the phone on the coffee table and dialled her own mobile number.

* * *

The Doctor made his way across the expanse of beach, which was strangely deserted. He knew that red-faced wild people had recently spooked some of the tourists, but he hadn't expected this level of dead. He'd look into it later – for the moment, he had a mission.

He easily found Martha's pink bag where they had left it, and her mobile phone was inside. He pocketed it, and headed toward the Sofitel.

The big hotel was just as quiet as the beach. Some of the track lighting in the lobby had been turned off, and what was left were fluorescent work lights that gave off a sickly grey glow that made everything look old and dingy. He headed tentatively toward the Oh Bar, and tried the door. Locked. He wasn't sure what to think about that. Either someone had finally gotten smart, or someone had done something incredibly stupid. He sonicked the sliding glass door open and went inside.

Upon opening the same cabinet as he had earlier, he found it empty. He tried another. Empty. No evidence to indicate where the oxygen tanks had gone or who had taken them. He tried another, then another, all empty. No tanks remained in the room. Again, he wasn't sure how to feel, he simply contemplated the next move.

When the phone rang in his pocket, it startled him.

"Yeah?" he said into the mouthpiece.

"You've got to get back here," she insisted.

"Why, what's happened?" he began to panic.

"Just come back. You're not going to like it."


	3. Chapter 3

THREE

She lay with her head in his lap, watching an ad for lipstick. He had returned to the TARDIS as soon as she'd phoned, and that was two minutes ago. Since then, they'd been waiting for the news to come back on. Martha had given the Doctor a brief run-down of what she had seen, and now he sat, frowning at the television, as though what had happened was its fault.

It was now going on one o'clock in the afternoon in Tahiti, which meant it was the middle of the night in Britain, but there was always news on somewhere, and when something broke, something broke. In a few hours, her friends and family at home would wake to a bit of panic.

Finally, the blondish talking head came back on the air with her beige suit and her perfect received pronunciation. "We're back with more on the current top story. A plague of sorts has broken out in the South Pacific, specifically in Tahiti, around the capitol of Papeete. Medical personnel are calling the virus _extremely dangerous_ and _horrible to witness_. Symptoms include a reddening of the face, near total dilation of the pupils, and wild, erratic behaviour. There is, as yet, no evidence of what has caused the virus, or what can cause it to spread. Officials believed initially that a batch of contaminated oxygen tanks in a Tahitian resort was the source of the problem, but they have since discounted the theory, as no tests on the oxygen tanks have yielded any sign of a foreign substance."

The Doctor's face scrunched into a prune. "No tests have yielded any sign of a foreign substance? What, are you people blind?"

"Easy," Martha counselled. "We're not as clever as you."

"There have been no reports of deaths as a result of this outbreak, however, medical personnel are at a total loss for how to cure, or even to treat the mysterious affliction. Patients are being taken to the psychiatric ward for their own protection. There have been twelve severe cases reported – the first victims were found inexplicably locked in a hotel room in the Sofitel resort hotel, a group entirely comprised of tourists. Since then, over a hundred mild cases have been reported, ninety-five per cent of which are occurring in natives to the island, and each is claiming the symptoms are getting worse by the minute. The number of mild cases is mounting steadily, but we will try to remain as accurate as we can, as we bring you the report."

"What?" the Doctor asked the television, deadpan. "A hundred more cases and counting? Are you kidding me?"

"And now, we've just received a report from South America. The same virus seems to be afflicting citizens of the city of Manaus, Brazil," the anchorwoman said, as a map of South America appeared on the screen. Red marked out the country of Brazil on an otherwise blue and green map, and a yellow dot shone just toward the middle of the red. "Hospital staffs are saying that the strange symptoms began to appear several days ago, and that they are getting steadily worse. Like the Tahitian cases, the numbers are mounting into the hundreds, however, the disease is progressing much more slowly."

The Doctor was speechless. He simply stared at the television with his mouth open. He had never seen anything like this before, not on Earth, and he was sure that it was of unnatural origin. And now it had extended itself virtually across the globe and was attacking an entirely separate population.

"Unfortunately," the newswoman continued, the map expanding to include both South America and the South Pacific islands. "It is unknown whether the disease has occurred in isolated pockets or whether there is a trail of the virus between Tahiti and Brazil. We are told that it appears to be totally unpredictable, and that it could literally strike anywhere next." The map disappeared, and the woman's face again graced the screen. "Citizens of Britain are being advised to stay indoors, and remained tuned into BBC news for further information."

"Doctor, we've got to get hold of one of those oxygen tanks," Martha pointed out, sitting up. She winced a bit at the pressure against her thighs. "Are you certain there were none left?"

"Of course," he told her. "I looked in every single cabinet. None of the oxygen masks were hooked to anything under the counters – they were all just… hanging there."

"Well, maybe we should check out Brazil," she offered. "Where did they say?"

"Manaus. It's in the Amazonas state."

"Do you think it's something with oxygen tanks there, too?" she asked.

"Probably," he said. "Maybe if we could talk to the hospital staffs, we could find out where it originated. Chances are, we'll discover a nursing home or a hydraulics plant or something…"

"I'll go back to our room and get our things," she said, moving to leave.

He caught her wrist. "No, don't. If it's ninety-five per cent natives being affected now, then it's probably airborne. We'll just have to leave everything behind."

"Well, what will we do when we get to Brazil?"

"We'll get some filtering masks from the hospital, and pick up some Portuguese. The language I mean, not people."

"I'm surprised that you haven't got any on the TARDIS."

"Masks, or Portuguese people?"

"Masks!"

"Fresh out – a bit of trouble with bone dust in an intergalactic ossuary. You were visiting your mum."

"Okay then."

* * *

The Doctor had decided that enough was enough – no more beach-wear. He could not be himself without his suit and trainers, so he went to change before the TARDIS departed. Martha was always glad to see him looking dapper, but she had been so amused by the pin-striped trunks, she was a bit sad to see them go. She told him as much, and he replied, "We'll talk about it when you break out the bikini again."

Soon after, the TARDIS materialised in yet another basement. This time, it was seen by an elderly custodian, who simply stared at the Doctor and Martha as they emerged. The Doctor placed one index finger over his mouth with a smile, to signify that the custodian shouldn't tell anyone what he'd seen. If the old man understood, he didn't acknowledge – he just watched them walk past. As they neared a staircase, a plastic bin on the wall to their right yielded some white surgical masks, meant to filter germs. They each took one and donned it before walking up the stairs.

On the ground floor, doctors and nurses and various other folks in uniform rushed past at breakneck speeds. Clearly, some calamity had occurred of late to make this hospital more chaotic than usual. Martha felt she was in her element.

A stretcher came bursting through a door, and the patient thereupon was red-faced and snarling. The red was not quite as plastic-looking as the hard cases they had seen in the sushi bar – the hue was more akin to a wicked sunburn. But the eyes were beginning to dilate and the behaviour was definitely starting to exhibit itself. The medics were shouting at each other trying to sedate him, while the doctors protested that he was "too far gone – it doesn't work past the first twenty-four hours. This is a forty-eight hour case."

The Doctor jumped into the fray, following the stretcher through the door of the ED and down a dingy corridor. "Another one? Blimey, how many does that make it?"

Martha tried to keep up. A couple of the white coats did double-takes when they saw him, but none of them had time to find out who he was or argue with him. "I don't know," one of them said. "Two hundred, three hundred maybe."

"Just in this hospital?" asked Martha.

"Yeah," someone shot back.

"Have you done CAT scans to check for brain damage?" she asked, as they arrived in a treatment room of some sort.

"On the first few, we tried that, but then the number cases got out of hand," a nurse answered. "We just had to start warehousing them until it slowed down."

"Speaking of the first few," the Doctor said, talking, but not helping. "Who were they?"

Finally, one of the physicians stopped and looked at the newcomers. "Look, we don't have time for this. Who are you, administrators?"

"Yes, exactly," the Doctor said, nodding vigourously, stealing a glance at Martha.

"With all due respect, this is not a good time for an evaluation."

"No, no, of course," the Doctor responded. "If you could just tell me where to find the case history, I'll get out of your hair."

"Ask Marisol at the front desk," the white coat responded.

"And Dr. Jones here, how might she carry out her duty of observing the psychiatric ward for behavioural conflicts in the patients?"

"Again, Marisol. Can you please step out of the way? You're blocking the cabinets we need."

"Of course, of course," the Doctor replied, grabbing Martha and stepping out of the room. As they exited, another red-faced patient flew by, this time only escorted by one lone orderly.

"This is mad," Martha sighed.

"Yep. Come on."


	4. Chapter 4

FOUR

Marisol, the lady with all the answers, was about the same height as Martha (which meant she was pretty short), but what she lacked in height she more than made up for in girth. Martha wondered briefly if her own waist was any larger than one of Marisol's thighs. She had tightly-curled dark hair, which had recently been dyed reddish-purple, and she seemed to chain-chew her gum. Martha assumed she'd been a smoker until rather recently.

But she knew her stuff. As soon as the Doctor flashed his psychic credentials and said he'd like to find out the origin of the illnesses and that his colleague had training in psychiatric, she knew what to do, and she asked no questions. "Right this way," she'd said.

They followed her down a long hallway into the psychiatric ward and she showed Martha inside. She took the Doctor to a file room and pointed to a high stack of red folders, colour-coded for this newest outbreak. Oldest cases were at the bottom. "Would you like a coffee?" she asked.

"No thanks. Can I get into the psychiatric ward, or do I need special permission?" he asked, not liking to leave Martha alone for too long.

"I swiped my card to get us into the restricted area already," she answered with a wink. "You can just go in there."

"Thank you."

He carefully removed the bottom file from the stack. The first victim had come in a couple of weeks earlier with mild facial discoloration and pupil dilation affecting his vision. He was Paolo Asuncião, aged thirty-six, a cattle rancher from just outside town. He was an accomplished agricultor, had been a wealthy man until this had happened. He was unmarried and had no children.

The second victim was Matteo Milho, an employee of Asuncião's, a farm-hand who had worked on the ranch for over three years. He was twenty-six, married with two children. His wife and kids were not showing signs of affliction at the time of his admission.

_Interesting_.

The third victim was an American, a professor of Botany from the University of Wisconsin, Dr. Constance O'Donnell. She was brought in after spending a day in the shallow rain forest on the west side of the town. She had been taking leaf samples and doing a joint research project with a colleague who was collecting the same specimens in Central Africa. As a matter of interest, they had done inquires about the colleague's health: one hundred per cent healthy, as of one week after Dr. O'Donnell's admittance.

Next, Pedro Dovinho, aged forty-eight, who worked for a deforestation conglomeration. After him, Ana Bendito, aged twenty-two, a protestor against said conglomeration.

He saw the link now, but he wasn't yet sure what it meant. He'd need an extra pair of microscope-hardened eyes. Fortunately, he had a perfectly good pair waiting for him just down the hall. He re-stacked the files in chronological order, and left the cramped room.

* * *

Martha was appalled. She knew there was no choice, but she couldn't help being appalled all the same. They were keeping the worst cases in a large cage, the most vicious and unbound of cases. It looked as though they had simply borrowed a portable tiger cage from a travelling circus. Perhaps that was precisely what they had done – Martha felt no need to know for sure. She had tried to count how many individuals were in the one cage, but they moved about so much, it was difficult. She was sure there were at least twenty in there, and that they were adding another one every couple of days. She also knew that this wasn't the only hospital in town – there must be dozens of other wards just like this one.

The people inside were just as she remembered them in the sushi alcove in Tahiti. Their faces were waxy red, their bodies were bent over – they seemed to move on their hands and feet. Their eyes were a ghastly black and they were restless, vicious, probably bloodthirsty as well. She was told that they were sometimes sedated, but she knew that indefinite twenty-four-hour-per-day sedation on a hard case like these people, can cause permanent brain damage and/or risk of coma. Besides, she gathered, they probably wanted to study this lot.

Dr. Vermelho, sitting beside her, was occasionally making comments about the personal lives of those in the cage. Martha had known that part of her task was to find out _who_ they were, so she had engaged Vermelho in conversation, claiming to be a psychiatrist. He had pointed out to her two cattle ranchers, an American researcher, a deforestation worker, a couple of deforestation protestors, a replenisher, a property developper, and two or three gardeners from public parks in the city. Martha quickly lost track of who was who, but the wheels began turning as she tried to see a link.

"Sorry for interrupting," the Doctor's voice said, dismissing Martha's train of thought. "Dr. Jones? Are you sufficiently well-studied?"

"I am," she said. "Thank you Dr. Vermelho. You've been a great help."

He nodded sombrely and Martha and the Doctor pulled the door shut and started back down the corridor toward Marisol's work station.

"What did you find?" she asked.

"I think I found a link between all of the first cases," he said. "They all work near the rain forest – I'm pretty sure it'll be some species of plant causing the problem. Many vegetational species grow both here and in Tahiti, the trick will be working out which one it is." He ran his right hand through his spiky hair.

"Ah, that's it," Martha groaned. "Something was eating at my brain, willing me to find the link, and it was there, I just couldn't unearth it!"

"There was a cattle rancher…"

"And they work on the edges of the forest, in the cut-down areas. Same for the property developpers," she offered.

"Yes," he said. "And if one or many of the plants here are causing the affliction, then that's how it's getting into the oxygen. Plants produce oxygen, ergo…"

"Oh, it's so clear now."

"Indeed," he said, raising an eyebrow and shoving his hands in his pockets. They found themselves standing at the end of the hallway just on the inside of some grey doors. The Doctor reached out and pressed the red button on the wall, and the doors swung open, almost majestically.

"Find a cure?" Marisol asked, matter-of-factly as they passed by her desk

"Yes, I have it at home," the Doctor quipped. "Just need to pop home and pick it up."

"Yeah, yeah," Marisol sighed, smacking her gum. "Are you two finished here?"

"We are," he said. "Thank you for your help."

"Hey, anywhere we can find a life belt," she told him. "We've really got nothing."

"We'll do what we can for you, but no promises."

She smiled weakly and nodded her head once. The Doctor and Martha smiled back, then went round the corner to find a staircase.

Their voices echoed in the sheer vertical space. "How are we supposed to collect enough samples? There are thousands of species of tree, flower, all manner of greenery in the rain forest, Doctor."

"We'll cheat, of course," he answered, moving down the stairs much faster than she.

He ran down the hall, past yet another cleaner (this one was much younger), and disappeared inside the TARDIS. Martha smiled awkwardly at the man, and followed the Doctor inside. Glad to finally be rid of it, she yanked the filter mask off her head and breathed in the clean, alien air.

"The TARDIS can narrow it down to a phylum or two," the Doctor explained as he prepared to move the vehicle. "If it gets in the midst of all the plants, it will be able to identify certain genetic features in the plant cells that are causing the contamination in the air. From there, we'll collect samples only from that phylum. If we're lucky, we'll only have to look at a hundred or so."

The TARDIS jerked, and Martha grabbed hold of a guardrail before asking, "Do you really think I'll be able to identify a particular leaf from a particular phylum on-sight? You must have a lot of confidence in me."

"Yes, I do. Have confidence in you, I mean. And no, I don't think that you can identify plant phyla," he said.

"Good, 'cause I can't."

"But I can," he said. "You are capable of seeing mutations within cells, no?"

"Yes."

"Well then, you stay in here and do your good microscoping work, while I go out hunting and gathering."

The vessel came to a halt, and Martha put one hand on her hip. "Now, don't get all _traditional_ on me."

"Have you ever known me to be traditional?" he asked with a giant smile.

She raised one eyebrow, as if to ask, "Do you really want me to answer that?"

He ran to the TARDIS door so that he could peer out the window. "Ah, lovely," he mused.

Martha joined him. He hoisted her a bit, and she saw a vast expanse of Brazilian rain forest ahead, seemingly endless and teeming with life at every step.

"Pity we can't open the door," she sighed.

"Soon enough," he told her, letting her down and kissing the top of her head.

They went back to the console, and he set a few controls on the TARDIS as he talked to it. "Steady now," he whispered. "Just find me a phylum, that's all we need… breathe in…"

The TARDIS wheezed, and the lights in the console room went a bit red for a moment, then came back to their usual warm gold.

"Whoa," the Doctor said. "Everything all right?" He stroked a bit of the round control board until the wheezing stopped.

He put on his glasses and pulled the monitor close and Martha crowded in behind him. The display was a bunch of round Gallifreyan squiggles, the Doctor's native language, just a spirograph design to her. She moved to the side to study his face, as he didn't say anything for ten long seconds. She was dismayed to find his face twised and confused.

"What is it, Doctor?"

"It's…"

"Has the TARDIS not found the phylum?"

"Yes, it has."

"Which one is it?" she asked, as if knowing would make a difference to her.

"It's all of them."

She paused, waiting for a further comment or punch line. Then, "What, _all _of the plants in the rain forest?"

"Yes," he said, standing up straight, burying his hands in his hair, staring at the screen.

"How can it be all of them?" It was a daft question, since she really had no idea how it could be _one_ of them either, but she had to say something.

"I don't know," he said. "There's got to be a link, though, between the vegetation here, and the vegetation in Tahiti."

He began to pace.

"We know that the most badly afflicted in Tahiti had just breathed pure oxygen distilled _in Tahiti_. We know that the most badly afflicted here were in close contact with the rain forest – that could be a coincidence, I suppose, but I don't believe in coincidences. Funny place the universe would be if I did, eh? The only logical connection is the vegetation contaminating the air, but it just doesn't make any sense that it's _all_ of the plants! I've heard of an alien fungus or tree incubating on Earth for a time, but nothing on this scale."

"Could it be that… I don't know, the alien species have been incubating since the Earth began billions of years ago?"

He looked at her with distress. "My _God_ you're clever, Martha Jones," he gasped without cracking a smile. Then, he realised an error. "No, if that were the case, it wouldn't be an alien species anymore. A few billion years is enough to make any species go native." He yanked the screen back over in front of himself. "What the hell is causing this?"

He leaned on the console with his chin in one hand, motionless for a long time. Now it was Martha's turn to pace. She had an infinite space within this vehicle in which she could do anything she liked. But she felt boxed-in, claustrophobic, and all she wanted to do was go outside.

Suddenly, she heard her mobile ring from somewhere in the TARDIS. Oddly, this seemed to snap the Doctor out of his stupor.

She looked askance at him, and he answered, "It's in the bedroom somewhere… I changed my clothes and must have thrown it someplace."

She ran down the hall and found their bedroom, and hurried to find her phone. It was buried beneath a pair of brown pinstriped swim trunks on the floor in front of the wardrobe. She'd never understand how a man with sixteen identical pressed suits, all hanging exactly two inches apart in his wardrobe could take off a garment and leave it crumpled on the floor. Well, she understood _sometimes,_ and the thought made her blush a bit. But the rest of the time…

She picked up the trunks and walked toward the laundry hamper as she opened her phone and said, "Hello?"

"Martha, where are you?" her mother demanded.

"Hello to you, too," Martha retorted.

"Sorry. Hello. Now where are you?"

"Just… out. Why do you ask?"

"Do you know anything about this epidemic?"

"You mean that red face thing? Not really," she sighed.

"Well, what's causing it?"

_Funny you should ask_. "We're trying to work that out right now, mum." It was the truth. Her mum didn't have to know that she wasn't talking about the hospital where she'd worked in London.

"Now tell me the truth, Martha," her mother said, deadly serious. "Have there been any cases in Great Britain?"

"What makes you think I would know that?" Martha said, throwing herself down onto the bed. She lay flat, staring at the scaly ceiling in a daughter's unique despair.

"You work in the ED, don't you?"

"So that means I'd know about all the cases in Great Britain?"

"Oh, just tell me!"

"No!" Martha practically screamed. "I don't know of any cases in Great Britain!"

"All right, no need to shout. I mean, it's hit three cities already. Seems to be moving our direction. Martha, where are you, love? Are you safe? I just worry with all that's out there, and you being exposed to all of it."

"Mum, I'm safe, all right? I'm with…"

"Who?" her mum asked, suddenly more keen than before.

"Nobody."

"The Doctor."

Sigh. "Yes, the Doctor."

Her mother was silent for a long moment. "What are you two doing?"

"Studying botany," Martha answered truthfully.

"You are so rude these days," her mum huffed. "Are you sleeping with him?"

"Yes. What of it?"

Martha thought she could _hear_ her mother's eyes narrowing and the tips of her ears turning bright pink. She was starting to wish she had lied.

"Martha Jones!" her mother exploded.

"Then why did you ask?" Martha whined. "You knew I'd say yes – admit it. Why ask me, if you're just going to yell at me? Wouldn't it be better if you didn't know?"

"I'll ring you later," her mum said quietly, now hurt.

"Fine, whatever."

"Goodbye for now, Martha."

But Martha's mind was already somewhere else. And then, something occurred to her.

"Mum! What do you mean it's already hit _three cities_?"


	5. Chapter 5

**_THIS CHAPTER HAS A BIT OF A RELATIONSHIP-SOAKED DETOUR. THERE IS A REASON FOR THIS, WHICH WILL BECOME CLEARER IN LATER CHAPTERS! I HOPE YOU ENJOY THE SAPPY. :-)_**

**_P.S. IT HELPS IF YOU'VE READ MY STORY "FERAL" IN ORDER TO GET SOME OF THE GUILT STUFF. I'M JUST SAYIN'._**

* * *

FIVE

Martha wandered back into the console room approximaely twenty minutes after speaking to her mother.

"Who was that?" the Doctor asked. "Those roaming charges can be wicked."

"My mum," she answered.

"Ah yes, my favourite klepto. How is she?"

"She's worried that I'm going to catch the disease. But she's usually worried about something. Oh, I told her we're sleeping together. Now she can stew over that for a while."

The Doctor's neck snapped suddenly, turning his face in her direction. "Why?" he asked, his mouth stuck in an "ooh" shape.

"Because she asked."

"She asked outright?"

"Yes."

"She actually said _are you sleeping with him?_"

"Yes."

"Did you explain that there's a bit more to it than that?"

"No, I didn't bother. Every time in the past I've told her I'm in love with someone, she insists that I don't know what love is, and that I should save myself for… I don't know, Prince Charles. Alan Alda."

"That's… that's totally out-of-line," he insisted, his voice going for pitch. "Adults should not be asking one another questions like that, or making assumptions like that."

"Adults who are your parents, they live by different rules."

"Still – you're what, twenty-three? Did she think you were a virgin?"

"It's not about the sex, Doctor. It's about _you_. She thinks you have some kind of thrall over me."

"Do I?"

"Of course," she said with a little smile. "But I know the score. I know who you are – she thinks I'm clueless about you."

"You might be," he told her gravely. "I'm not even sure you can wrap your mind around nine hundred years, Martha. The things I've done and seen… things I used to have."

"That part, I'm okay with. Someday, you'll tell me… or your won't. But I know who you are _now,_ Doctor," she said with pleading eyes. "The part of you that loves me, I know."

"The part of me that loves you…"

"You are a damaged individual, Doctor, I know that," she said softly, carefully. "All of your feelings come from a place of loss and guilt, including how you feel about me. Your home planet died, and now you're alone amongst Time Lords. Survivor's guilt. You lost Rose, found her, lost her again, and there's guilt over that. And I don't know how many other tragedies you feel are your fault, but I know they're in there. And you're tormented and scared _all the time_, Doctor, I can see it in your eyes. And you love me at least partly because you need to cling to something…"

"Martha, no…" he began.

"Yes, Doctor," she corrected. "But why else do people love each other? We have to cope with our lives somehow, with all the guilt and sadness and pain, and what better way than to find another person to lean on? And how better to share the triumphs and joys?"

"Yeah," he whispered.

"We are slaves to our darker sides. We _can't not _feel things through a filter of pain," she assured him. "It's just that your life has been a lot longer than most, and your heartbreaks have been a lot bigger. I don't need to know the details to understand their effect. You love me, but every move you make with me is tentative because you're only seeing me through the fog of the past."

He looked down at this trainers. The toes were scuffed – a chunk had been taken out of the rubber somehow or other. He wondered if the TARDIS could heal rubber – he'd never asked it.

"Am I wrong?" she asked, after he didn't say anything for a full minute.

"No, you're not wrong. I feel everything… from… pain," he admitted, seeming almost surprised by it himself. "Even good things. I love you… from a dark, dark place."

She exhaled and relaxed, even smiled a bit.

"I want to give you all of that," he told her, taking her by the shoulders. "I want to tell you everything – where it all comes from…" he stopped, choking a bit on his words.

"Okay," she whispered, stroking his cheek. "Okay."

He smiled at her with tears in his eyes. He searched her, then said, "I can't believe she doesn't think you know what love is."

She smiled back. "She's my mum. She still reminds me to put on oven mitts when I take out the casserole."

He took her by the cheeks and kissed her, much as he had in the hospital when they first met: spur of the moment, purposeful, passionate. Only this time, the weight of their conversation was carried in the kiss. He hadn't said much with words this time (which was odd for him), but he'd found a way to convey his feelings somehow.

And what did he feel at this moment? He was flooded with relief. On some level, he had known that Martha knew him, just as Rose had known him, but he never expected to hear either one of them articulate it in such a complete way. He'd never expected Martha to understand that his feelings for her were not… pure. But she did. She understood, and she wanted to know more.

In a way, he supposed, he'd been underestimating these girls all along. How many times had he called Rose a "stupid ape?" and how many times had she taken it? Rose had met him when he was still very, very raw from the Time War, and had gone a long way toward rehabilitating him. But she knew, at the back of her mind, that nothing could rehabilitate him totally, that there would always be a black cloud over his existence, the mark of crushing loneliness.

And Martha, she'd met him when he was still very raw over Rose, _compounded_ with his usual last-of-the-Time-Lords angst. When he had taken her into the TARDIS, he genuinely had been feeling like he couldn't catch a break, that the universe was out to get him, taking the Time Lords away from him, as well as a human companion whom he loved. He had been shamefully rough on her, telling her in no uncertain terms that she was no kind of replacement for Rose, and it was one trip then _sayonara_. But she had a persistent personality, and she had penetrated deeply enough to spur him to take her further, then further, then further, until he felt rehabilitated again and could learn to love her. But Martha too had known that nothing could ever do that completely. She understood that nothing could deliver him from being the last of his kind, and on top of that, nothing could erase the time Rose had spent with him and away from him, and what had happened to her in the meantime.

These girls were clever – they weren't oblivious to the shadow that constantly loomed over him or the pain in his eyes. And yet, he had managed to convince himself that he'd hidden it from them. He had enjoyed thinking he was letting them believe that they made his life complete. They didn't, and they both knew it.

But they both _did _know they were important and loved, and that's what they needed to know.

Sadly, he'd never had the chance to talk this way with Rose. He'd started, once, to tell her about his family, but they had been distracted and then separated. Now, as he pulled away from kissing Martha, he looked into her eyes and felt fuller than he had in a long while. He felt their relationship had gone deeper in the last few minutes, that he had gained understanding, which, of course, _she_ had already had for quite some time.

"This has been a revelation for me," he said. "You are so… just…" In lieu of finishing the sentence, he just hugged her tightly.

"I feel somewhat healed," she told him.

"I wasn't aware that you were wounded."

"No, not wounded, just that there was a gulf. There may always be a gulf, but it doesn't mean that we can't begin to fill it." She never said, but she had begun lately to think idly about the future; the next companion. Life with a Time Lord meant thinking about one's own impermanece, like it or not. Whether that meant one's own mortality or one's own dispensibility, she wasn't sure. But inevitably, one way or another, Martha would be gone from his life, and maybe the next person could avoid the angst because the Doctor would be slightly more open and able to admit how dark a soul he was. On this train of thought, she wondered if anyone would ever feel they were living in the shadow of Martha Jones, as she had once felt she lived in the shadow of Rose Tyler. For their own sake, she hoped not.

"So let's heal each other," he whispered.

She pulled away and smiled. "You mean like, playing doctor?"

He chuckled. "My favourite game."

"I wish we could," she said. "We have to go to Vail."

"What?"

"Did I not mention?"

"No."

"When I was talking to my mum and she was telling me to stay away from you, and avoid the plague, and not to talk to strangers, she told me to go tune into BBC News because the virus has hit another city… it's in the States this time."

"And it's Colorado? I'd have thought Florida or Louisiana. That throws off my whole theory, Martha."

"I'm just telling you what I heard."

He ran his hands through his hair. "Well, maybe we'll get some answers that cannot be yielded here. Did it say anything about the severity of cases?"

"No," she said. "Nothing specific. A local celebrity was apparently brought in overnight. He was pretty far gone. He owns some ski lodge up there."

"A ski lodge?"

"Yeah. It's Vail."

"But I don't get it."

"I don't either. That's why it's good to have a disapparating travel device, eh?"

"Yes," he conceded. "What time is it?"

"Three in the afternoon."

"Perfect," he said.

* * *

The TARDIS was fatigued, somehow. The grinding sound it usually made was slightly off – not enough for Martha to notice, but the Doctor certainly did.

On the first try, it delivered them on a mountaintop above the town of Vail. The last of the skiiers were zooming through, hoping to make it back down before the lifts closed at 3:30 so they could have another go. The police box was almost knocked down by a wannabe ski-jumper.

On the second try, it delivered them into the ski village on a balcony overlooking a stream.

The Doctor peeked outside. People were milling about as normal, no signs of sickness or fear. He figured it was probably safe to walk outside, but he asked the TARDIS anyhow. It delivered a wishy-washy "probably." Making a vow to look into its energy stores and consciousness as soon as this was over, he and grabbed Martha's hand and they walked into the cold, late-afternoon shade. In the mountains, the sun goes away very, very early.

The Doctor noticed a newspaper box nearby. He didn't have any U.S. coinage, so he simply sonicked it open and grabbed an issue.

"Walter Morritz," he said. "That's the name of the lodge owner who was afflicted. And it looks like there are a few people who had been staying there who have been taken in with milder cases."

"So, let me get this straight," Martha said, taking her head in her hands. "We have an airborne virus which seems to be associated with oxygen, showing up in random parts of the world. In Tahiti, it's focused on Papeete, in Brazil, it's in the rain forest, and in Vail, it's one particular ski lodge? That doesn't make any sense whatsoever."

The Doctor inhaled and exhaled gravely. "Until now, I thought the answer was in the vegetation," he said. "I was focusing on the similarities between two tropical locations, but now…"

"Ugh," Martha groaned. She wrapped her arms around herself against the cold.

"Why don't we go back inside and you can change your clothes while I get us a reservation at that lodge."

"Are you sure that's wise?" she asked.

"Of course not," he said, "But how else can we figure out why this thing is focusing on it?"

"It's bound to be packed," she pointed out as they stepped back inside the TARDIS. "End of ski season."

"Just leave it to me."


	6. Chapter 6

**IT HAS COME TO MY ATTENTION THAT THE FFN WEBSITE IS EITHER CLAIMING THAT CERTAIN PORTIONS OF MY STORY DON'T EXIST AND/OR ARE NOT ALLOWING PEOPLE TO LEAVE COMMENTS... OR THEY'RE SENDING OUT NOTIFICATIONS THAT A STORY IS UP, BUT IT ACTUALLY TAKES 36 HOURS TO APPEAR! IF THAT'S HAPPENING TO YOU, SORRY ABOUT THAT. TO MY KNOWLEDGE, I'M NOT DOING ANYTHING TO CAUSE IT (THOUGH, ONE NEVER KNOWS). THANKS FOR STICKING WITH ME, AND PLEASE BE PATIENT! **

* * *

SIX

A "mysterious cancellation" allowed the Doctor and Martha entry to the Vail Mountain Lodge with a minimum three-night stay. They had no intention of staying for three nights, but they had a way of flouting the system wherever they went…

It was a nice room – plenty expensive. Not overly large, but it had everything they needed (a bed, a table and chairs, television) and plenty of amenities that they did not need. Reading a service card detailing such things, the Doctor said, "White chocolate mints on the pillows, made exclusively by Godiva. Fresh Atlantic salmon on bagels with Mimosas in the morning… how do get fresh_ Atlantic_ salmon in Colorado anyhow? Dolce & Gabbana robes, lavender and mint bath salts (lavender for relaxation and mint for mental acuity) and free wi-fi. And who the hell needs freshly warmed towels delivered exactly at five o'clock? How do they even do that?"

"Skiers like it. And they have a special oven," Martha answered absently as she shed her jacket and searched the pockets, making sure she hadn't left her TARDIS key behind.

He looked up at her with surprise.

She shrugged. "Well, they do."

"Oh, I believe you. And hey, good news. If we want to order an adult film, the title will not appear on the bill."

"Well, thank God."

"Yeah," he said, eyebrows raised, setting the card down.

Martha turned and stared out the window at the mountains. They could see across the valley, the entire expanse covered with snow, and the sun was giving them its last little peach-coloured wink for the day from between two huge peaks.

"You know, when you think of America, you think New York, Hollywood, the White House, Disneyland," she commented. "You forget about this part. At least I do."

He came up behind her and slid his arms around her waist. He had to bend to do it, but it was worth it. He hugged her close and sighed. After a long moment, just above a whisper he said, "Reminds me of home. Orange sky."

She immediately felt a lump form in her throat. The Doctor _never _said things like that. "Yeah?" she asked, for want of a better response.

He took a step back and sat on the edge of the bed. For a long while, he stared at the lush green-blue carpet beneath his feet. She just watched him, trying to read the expression on his face, but it seemed blank.

A long time passed, and he said, "The mountains were the last thing to go. The Peaks of Restraint, on the other side of my planet. They burned last."

"You don't have to do this now," she whispered, knowing that he wanted to share his pain with her as he'd promised, but never having expected a bomb this size to drop so soon.

"The Time Lords were not prepared – boy, were they not prepared. A fight between technologies, a battle of wills, even simple swordfights… the best in the universe. But a full scale attack from the skies with Daleks flying in and blowing stuff up?" He looked up at her and shook his head. "We had always been woefully arrogant, thought that brain power, rationality, strategy could ward off anything. We could wield the fabric of time and reality, why bother with guns? We would never _stoop_ to developing firearms, vehicles that could fly and shoot at things. And for billions of years, it worked."

Martha sat down next to him and put her hand on his knee, meant as a comfort.

"The war had been raging for years within communication signals, ally recruitment and stupid things like that. I'd never thought much about it. I was on the run – literally, on the lam. Then, one day, a call came," he continued. "It was a distress call from Gallifrey. _Come home immediately,_ it said, _the Time Lords are in crisis._ I was travelling with someone then. Her name..." he swallowed. "Her name was Thisa."

She had been ready to hear stories of past companions. This particular memory bubbling up did not surprise her. What did surprise her was that after having come this far, he stopped short, leaned forward and buried his head in his hands. He remained this way for quite some time.

"You don't have to go on," she whispered, stroking his back.

"I want to," he said, muffled into his palms. He sat up straight. "But maybe not now. If I talk about her, I won't be able to concentrate..."

"It's okay," she told him. "You'll get there. We'll fix this plague thing, and you'll get there. We'll go somewhere so remote that no-one could possibly need us, and you'll tell me."

He looked at her squarely, gravely, his face frazzled, his eyes deep and haggard. He acted for a moment as thought he might say something, but when he opened his mouth, nothing came out. Finally, he just nodded.

The worst possible timing brought a knock to their door. They both sighed heavily, and Martha went to answer it. It was a middle-aged blonde woman dressed in business clothes. She never explained who she was, she was just there, and she said, "Hi there. I'm here to welcome you, and to invite you to our afternoon wine social. It's at four-thirty in the common room, open exclusively to guests of the Vail Mountain Lodge, and it's a place to unwind and network with other guests. We have fifteen varieties of international cheeses, and choice of over sixty wines from all over the world, as well as fruits, breads and nuts. Hope to see you there." She handed Martha a flyer and walked away without Martha having said a word.

Nonplussed, Martha shut the door.

The Doctor, though still not himself, seemed to have become a bit more lucid. He stood up and said, "Well, shall we network with yuppies?

* * *

On the Doctor's arm, Martha walked down the stairs into the common room of the lodge. "You sure you're up for this?" she asked.

"Would you stop asking me that? I'm fine."

A fire was raging in the large brick fireplace, and ski-weary folk stood around it, sipping wine. Nearly everyone was wearing polyester insulated skiers' trousers, alpine jumpers, headbands. Martha felt underdressed – silly her for wearing jeans and a long-sleeved shirt inside an overheated building.

They stood on the outskirts of the room, looked at each other, sighed, then split up. Martha walked toward the buffet, and grabbed a small plate and chose a couple of different cheeses and two large strawberries. A man still in his ski parka was also there, piling his own plate. He was about thirty, maybe, and good-looking enough. Meh.

But she was here to chat up the clientele. So, bombs away. "Hello," she said, tentatively.

He was surprised, and his head snapped to the side. "Oh, hello," he said. Upon looking at Martha closer, his voice dropped into a creepy lilt. "Hel-lo. Didn't see you there, though I don't know how... that's... possible." He looked her up and down unashamedly.

_Great. My first attempt at intel here and I get hit on._

Well, perhaps this could be a good thing. "Erm, well, how long have you been staying here?" she asked.

He ignored her question and focused on her accent. "Ooh, a Brit, eh?" he asked. "How exotic!" Saying this, his eyebrows raised momentarily, and he leaned slickly on the table next to him.

"Well, not really. Just a Londoner."

"I was in London this winter for the opening of a show in the West End that my friend was producing. Alan Edmundson-Patton, do you know him?"

"No," she answered. "No, not all British people know each other."

"Of course," he laughed, and then offered his hand. "I'm Vincent Bidwell."

"Martha Jones," she said, shaking it.

"Are you here alone?" he asked.

"Erm," she hesitated, finding the Doctor near the bottom of the stairs, chatting with an attractive redhead. "Yes."

"Fabulous. Which wine will you have?"

She followed him over to the wine bar, opposite the hearth. He sat, so then, she did as well.

"I'm not sure," she said. "What do you recommend?"

"Oh, I know just the thing. Marcus, you know what I like," he said to the attendant. "And one for the lady."

A small glass of red wine was set before each one of them, and Vincent Bidwell raised his. "To chance meetings. Who knows what the evening will bring?" He raised one eyebrow.

She clinked glasses with him and sipped, resisting the urge to mutter that she knew one thing the evening definitely_ wouldn't_ bring.

An older couple broke away from the campfire cluster, and approached. "Vincent," the woman said. She had a grey pageboy haircut and, Martha thought, very sharp lips. "So good to see you. Are you here for the JAF conference?"

"But of course," Vincent replied with an exaggerated French accent, kissing the woman's hand. "Martha Jones, allow me to introduce Cecily and Samuel Gladstone. They are members of the HCB, though I know them through the CCP conglomerate."

"Right," Martha said. "Nice to meet you."

"Oh, you're from London!" Samuel Gladstone exclaimed. "Lovely city..."

"Don't tell me, you were just there."

"Every October. An old chum from Harvard lives near Kensington Gardens. Harold Michaelson, do you know him?"

"No," Martha said, inwardly sighing. "No, I don't."

"Oh, I'm afraid that's _his loss_," Samuel said, winking at Martha.

"Well, it's time we left these two alone, dear," Cecily Gladstone said to her husband. "So many people to say hello to. Martha, it was _just lovely_ to meet you, and I hope we shall see you soon. _Cheerio._" With that, she walked away with a hearty giggle.

"Sorry about that," Vincent said. "Having money doesn't necessarily give one class, you understand."

"Oh, I understand," she assured him. "So, do you know most of these people?"

"Yes, most of them," he said. "Vail hosts conferences all the time, and you tend to see the same people about town every year. For instance, the heavy-set lady there on the sofa near the fire, that's Lillian Rabb. She's in a different company, but we hold the same position – I've seen her up here every year since 1999. And the guy in the pink sweater standing smack in the middle of the room, that's Gregory Stevenson. That hunk of beef in blue standing next to him will be his date – he always brings someone different.

"And over there, by the stairs, the redhead, that's Nicolette Dorsey," he said. "She's in real estate. Her conference will be beginning tomorrow, while mine is just now ending – that's the way it's been for the past four years. Though, that gentleman she's talking to in the pinstriped suit, I've never seen him before. He must be new."

Martha smiled. "Must be."

It was just about that time that Nicolette Dorsey, whom she couldn't help but keep her eye on, handed a business card to the man in pinstripes and walked away to join the group at the fireplace. The Doctor placed the card in his pocket and hung back, out of the fray. He caught her eye and smirked.

"But you know what? This is all very well and good, but Walter's presence is sorely missed," Vincent said, sipping his wine.

"Walter?"

"Yes, Walter Morritz, the owner. He was rushed out of here last night with some kind of illness. They're saying it might be the same thing that's breaking out in Brazil, have you heard about that?"

"Yeah, isn't it weird?" she piped up. Anything to get him talking about the plague on his own.

"It sure is," he said. "And a few of the guests came down with it early this morning. They have no idea what's causing it, but they're not thinking it's airborne yet."

"So, this Morritz," she said. "He came to these wine socials a lot?"

"Every night," Vincent answered. "He's a great storyteller – funny and charming. He'd always keep the conversation going, could always get the group through a lull – he felt it was his duty as host. He'd sit by the fire and hold court if need be. It's just not the same without him."

"Hm," Martha grunted. She plunged into thought as she sipped her wine.

"But enough of this morbidity," Vincent announced, setting his glass down. He took her hand. "Are you free for dinner?"

"Erm, I'm..." she stuttered. "Well, see... no. I'm not. Sorry."

"Oh," he answered, crestfallen. "I guess I must have misread this interaction."

"No, no," she assured him, though it was true_, _he _had _misread it. She had seen to that. "It's just... I'm having dinner with some colleagues. Very important – working dinner. Can't be missed."

"Of course," he relaxed. "Can I call you sometime?"

"I'm leaving tomorrow," she told him. "Going back home. You know. England. Other side of the Atlantic."

"Right. Well, maybe I'll see you here next year."

"That would be fun. I mean... it _was_ fun. Thank you." She left her wine half-drunk on the bar and scurried toward the stairs. Passing the Doctor, she ran up the stairs, and he watched her go.

For a brief moment, the Doctor and Vincent made eye contact. The Doctor shrugged at him, then turned and followed Martha.


	7. Chapter 7

SEVEN

"What did you find out?" asked the Doctor, as he walked through the door of their room. She was pacing nervously.

"What? Oh, nothing."

He was confused. "Then... why scurry away so fast?"

She stopped and stared at him, put her hands on her hips. "He asked me to dinner."

"Well, of course he did. You're beautiful, and you were flirting like mad. You touch my thigh, I'm going to want to whisk you off somewhere too."

She blushed. "Sorry. Thought it might be useful, but all he did was tell me the names of everyone in the room and toss around acronyms."

He waved away her apology. "Don't be sorry. As long as you leave the party with me, it's all in the name of intel, right?"

"Of course," she smiled, walking toward him. She slipped her arms around him. "I'll _always_ leave the party with you. Speaking of which, what did you find out from Nicolette Dorsey?"

He seemed surprised that Martha had known her name. "As much as you did," he muttered. "Only instead of acronyms, she threw around the names of about twelve different British people she knows, asking if I knew them as well. One of them I actually did, but I didn't say."

Martha laughed. "Yep, heard a good bit of that myself."

"But she didn't say anything important. Just that Walter Morritz was usually there."

"Yeah, Vincent said the same thing," she offered. "He said his absence is definitely felt down there."

"Been going to that social every night for years," he thought. "If I didn't know better, I'd say the virus was in the wine."

Martha gulped. "You don't think..."

"Hm? Oh, at this point, it could be anything."

"Doctor! Why didn't you warn me?"

"Why? I said it could be anything. We were taking a big risk just by coming to this lodge – for all we knew it was in the heating ducts or the water or the towel fibres! Still could be. Do you feel anything coming on?"

"No, you?"

"No, but I'm not human."

"Right."

"You let me know, though, the minute you feel anything strange."

"Don't worry. But you know, it might worth looking into the wine since it's mostly imported," she suggested. "That might answer your question about the vegetation, do you think?"

"Grape vines don't grow in tropical climates," he said. "But it doesn't mean that there couldn't be a plant species in common. We should really check out the bottles – maybe something will ring a bell."

She put her hands on her hips again. "Want me to go distract the bartender?" Her face registered tedium.

He smiled. "You'd be good at it, but I was thinking we'd go down tonight after everyone's gone. Middle of the night, even."

"Okay. What do we do in the meantime?" she asked, sitting down on the bed.

He approached her. "You could distract _me_ for a while."

She looked up at him and took his hands. "Do you need distracting?"

"Always."

* * *

There was time to kill and love was in the air.

With the Doctor's earlier revelations of the Time War, which he had never discussed with _anyone_, they both felt a deepening of their bond, a strengthening of their love. The Doctor was determined to open up to her, as soon as he felt he could, and she was determined to listen when he did. But for now, they let their hands do the talking while their lips stayed silent and pressed against each other. She undid his coat buttons painfully slowly while their tongues danced, and then _untied _his tie. Normally, she would have tugged at it until it was loose enough for him to climb out of it, but this was not their usual I-must-have-you-now fare. This was about taking time, deepening, strengthening.

Then the shirt buttons went, equally slowly, each of which revealed a fine little patch of flesh underneath which Martha found hot to the touch. He pulled aside the v-neck of her blouse and kissed her collarbone, covered every inch painstakingly with his lips. He nibbled her ear and felt her lean into him as he did so. When he pulled her shirt up over her head, she backed away and lured him toward the bed. He joined her, and they resumed their slow, slow burn.

She felt, as she hoped he did, that this was all a metaphorical dance foreshadowing the literal purging that was to come. She wanted to hear everything – she wanted him to finish the story he had started earlier. She was scared, though – what if he confessed something awful and she inadvertently freaked out? That would ruin the whole thing. She explored her feelings a bit. What was the worst thing she could hear? She tried to prepare herself for anything.

She already knew some fairly disturbing things about him. On a more benign level, she knew he was nine hudred years old and had almost always travelled with a companion, most of them human. She knew for sure that there was at least one (other than her) with whom he had been in love, and probably more before that. She knew he had changed his face a few times (though she wasn't sure how many), and had a very vague idea, after talking to Rose, of what he had been like before he'd regenerated into the Doctor she knew.

On a different level, she knew he'd fought in the war, he'd said he was the only one who could end it. He had probably killed and maimed, dropped bombs, relished in the deaths of another species – that was war. All the things he now despised, she was now sure, embody the spirit of war, a spirit which must have inhabited him at the darkest time in his long, long life. She felt that she was prepared for all of that, and all that that implies.

But then, shamefully, her mind wandered as the Doctor's mouth drifted down her body and his fingers undid the button of her jeans. Could he have killed in cold blood, felt that bloodlust and enjoyed it? Could he have tortured or raped or buried someone alive? Worse still, could he have done that to a companion or a loved one? She began to wonder at the myriad of different ways a Time Lord could violate a human if he so desired. Mind probes, dream visitation, imposed insomnia or hypersomnia, physiosonic or psychosonic manipulation, involuntary enthrallment... and those were just the ones she knew about. Those were the ones she could get her mind around. There were others she hadn't heard of, and still more that she couldn't understand even if she tried.

Not that she was losing trust in her Doctor. She didn't for a second believe he could kill or rape or torture her any more than she could him. But war is war. She actually managed to lose herself once again in the moment after thinking this way. She had been learning to let go of certain thoughts until they suited her – it was a handy skill to have.

Unfortunately, with passions ignited and clothes still unpeeled, the major distraction came in the form of a loud clamour coming from somewhere nearby within the building. It sounded like a rock band trashing a room. The Doctor and Martha sat up with a start and looked at each other with alarm. When they heard more clamour, they dashed for the door and listened for a few moments through the wood, exchanging an expression of utter dread. They both knew what it meant: more victims. Voices were murmuring in the hall. The sound of a gurney being moved about, totally distinctive in Martha's ears.

Suddenly, a man's voice yelled out, "Hold him back! Hold him back!"

Another man screamed, "I got him! You got him?"

"Yes!"

"One, two, three!"

Then the sound of screaming from the full throat of a grown man, and sounds of struggling from at least three or four others. The Doctor opened the door just a tad, and they observed three men holding down a red-faced man, while another man strapped him to the gurney. Down the hall beyond, a red-faced woman lay on a similar gurney, waiting to be taken down to the ambulance. She seemed to be sedated, and a couple of female paramedics stood guard.

Finally, they restrained the man and shot him with sedatives, which began to take effect almost immediately. A woman wandered out of the room which the Doctor presumed was the man's. She was holding a wallet.

"Got an ID?" asked one of the men.

"Yeah," she answered. "His name's Vincent Bidwell."

"Oh my God!" Martha whispered.

"Is that the guy you were talking to?" asked the Doctor, also whispering.

She nodded, her eyes wide with worry. "Doctor, the wine."

"I know, I know," he said. He shut the door completely and took her in his arms.


	8. Chapter 8

EIGHT

She was frightened now – she had not had a full glass of the wine that Vincent drank often enough for the bartender to know what he liked, but they knew _nothing_ about this virus. What if that's all it took? What if a sip was all she needed to begin the slow downward spiral, only accelerated in Vincent because he'd had so much of it over the last few days? What if she started to get sick and didn't realise it? Would the Doctor be able to care for her _and_ work out the problem? Would he commit her – would he be able to? Would he find an antidote, or even the cause?

"Shhh," the Doctor said, stroking her head. "Quiet down in there. You're going to be fine."

She had just been thinking about mind probes. "Stop doing that," she said, happy for the brief respite from thinking of catching the red-face disease.

"I'm not doing anything, Martha," he insisted. "You're crying out."

"Hm," she resigned. She pushed away from him. "What now?"

"We wait."

The Doctor watched with a bit of confusion as she went back to where her shirt had been dropped and pulled it over her head. She fixed her hair absently, then opened the door again, just slightly, and watched the paramedics go. When they were out of sight, she walked out into the hallway in the opposite direction.

"Where are you going?" he asked.

"I'm going to get a bottle of that wine," she said. "And you're going to analyse it."

"Well... er... just... hold on!" he stuttered. He himself went back to where his clothes had been dropped. He pulled on his shirt and buttoned it, then followed Martha, who was standing outside the door tapping her foot.

As they got to the end of the hall, they noticed some flashing lights. A large window covered the front of the lodge, from the ground floor all the way up to the third. They peered outside and saw no fewer than _five_ ambulances, and a separate police van. Patients were being loaded into all of the vehicles, the harder cases in the ambulance, the easier into the van. This hospital probably had never seen so much action – not without an avalanche, anyway.

"I'm counting ten new victims," the Doctor muttered.

"Yeah," she agreed. "Doctor, I think that woman on the gurney at the other end of the hall that we saw earlier..."

"Was Nicolette Dorsey," he said. "I know."

"Did you see her drinking wine?" she asked.

"Not while I was with her," he answered. "But after she walked away from me, she went over to the fire to have a chat with the others. After we left, anything could have happened."

"Especially if she came back upstairs with Vincent," Martha thought aloud. "Maybe they had some of that same wine."

The Doctor strode toward the staircase. "Which wine was it?"

"I don't know," she said. "But I'll know it if I see it."

He looked at the front desk. "Well, we're in luck. It's a young woman at the front desk. I'll just have to see how charming I can be."

Martha smiled. "Oh, _you _go distract the guard while _I _do the gumshoe rubbish? That _does_ make a change!"

"Shut up. Go."

Now taking a page from his book, she smirked and walked toward the fireplace, into the large room which had been teeming with fire and life and flowing wine just a couple of hours before.

"Hello there," the Doctor said to the young woman at the front desk. He decided to pull out all the stops and just be chuffing adorable. He peered over the marble countertop and snooped at the book she'd had her nose in, then rested his chin in his palm, elbow on counter and said, "Might I ask, what _are _you reading?"

She looked up and smiled. When she did, the Doctor gave her a droopy-eyed half-grin. He judged her to be about Martha's age, but her eyes didn't have nearly the spark. She was blonde, plain, and wore her uniform a bit too loosely to be flattering. Her hair was piled into a nest behind her head and some strands hung around her face. She was pleasant enough to look at, but... well.

"Um... um... sorry... it's just... um," she said, disarmed, tongue-tied, totally and completely charmed. Blimey, that had been easy. "It's _Crime and Punishment_, by Fyodor Dostoevsky. Heard of it?" She horribly butchered the Russian name, but he could hardly fault her.

He resisted the urge to boast that he'd met Dostoevsky and had actually, at one point, been made godfather to his son. Instead, he just smiled and said, "Oh yes. Lovely read, isn't it?"

She looked at him with glossed-over eyes and seemed to lose track of what he had said. After an uncomfortable amount of time had passed, she said, "What?"

He smiled again charmingly. "I just said it's a lovely read. Is something wrong?"

"I'm sorry, am I being rude? It's... well, it's your accent."

Inwardly, he sighed, and begged her not to ask where he was from. He liked London a lot, it was a second home. But it's not where he was _from_. He didn't like saying it was, especially not now. But out loud, he said, "Pffff, really? Awww, no!"

"Yes, yes! I just love it!"

"In Vail? You must get people here from all over!"

"Yes, but... well, they're usually not as nice as you. Or as..."

"As?"

"Well-dressed?" She blushed. He did a bit, as well.

"Ah. So, Renee," he said, peeking at her name tag. "Where does a bloke go to find an extra set of warmed-up towels around here?"

Her face fell a bit. "Oh. Well. I'm afraid the machine had been shut down for the night. Sorry."

"Oh, that's a shame," he said. "Well then, how about an extra packet or two of coffee? Got to have something to keep me warm, eh?"

As soon as it was out of his mouth, he knew it sounded wrong. And oh, God, she was winding up to lob the innuendo right back. Her eyebrows went uneven, she licked her lips and touched her hair, sidled up to the counter for a return hit. Before she could open her mouth, though, he recovered with, "The heating in our room is not working. We've tried everything. We can't get it to work."

He hope he'd said _we _enough times.

"Oh, why didn't you say so? I'll send someone up right away. What room?"

"Er, two fourteen."

"Hang on," she said. She pushed back in her roller chair to a door marked _Private_. She opened it without standing up. "Frank? Can you check the heating in two fourteen?"

"Frank's not here," a voice said. "He went up to clean out those rooms... you know, Mr. Bidwell and Ms. Dorsey and the others."

"Okay, well, can you just give him the message? It's like a million degrees below zero, and these people have no heat."

"Just a second," the voice said. "I'm looking at the grid, and all systems are operational, it says."

"Well, it lies. Just give Frank the message."

She pulled the door shut. "Sorry about that," she said to the Doctor. "That's Jason. He's clueless, but he'll tell Frank."

"Good ol' Frank," the Doctor commented. "Thanks."

Just then, a man in a dark green jumpsuit came lumbering out of the lift. He had a luggage cart piled with at least ten expensive suitcases. It took his whole weight leaning back on it to budge the thing, and he pushed it over behind the desk where Renee was sitting.

"Frank, this man's room has no heat," Renee said to him.

Frank looked at the Doctor. "Sorry, but it's going to have to wait. We've had a bit of an emergency."

"Oh, is it that plague thing?" the Doctor asked innocently. "Nasty bit of work, that is."

"You're telling me. Not that I'm exactly the wronged party in this scenario, but I'm getting a little tired of hauling all of their stuff down here every time they all go nuts."

"What do you do with it?" asked the Doctor"

"We send it over to the hospital," Renee said, standing up.

"That's kind of you," the Doctor commented earnestly. He noted that this kind of behaviour would not have been found in a larger city.

"But first, we have to find out who exactly they are and where they were sent." She pulled the top suitcase from the pile and opened it on the floor. Frank did likewise. "This one is Bidwell's," she announced, after looking in a file-o-fax. She immediately closed the suitcase and jotted his name down on a pad.

"This one is Nicolette Dorsey's," Frank said.

The Doctor caught sight of Martha out of the corner of his eye. He glanced at her as she snuck toward the bottom of the staircase. She gestured for him to wrap it up and follow her. He gestured for her to join him at the counter. She looked down at the bottle of wine in her hand and seemed to shrug, as in "What the hell am I supposed to do with this?" She walked closer to the Doctor, then stopped at the counter and set the wine down between her feet.

"What's up?" she asked.

"They're going through the personal effects of the people who were taken out of here earlier," he told her. To Renee and Frank, he said, "Listen, can we be of some help?"

"You can jot down the names," Frank said roughly and without looking at him. "This is Sam and Cecily Gladstone."

"What?" Martha burst out? "Seriously?"

"Yeah, seriously," Frank said, again, without looking at her. Renee, however, looked at her with a bit of jealousy. Both the Doctor and Martha missed it, of course.

The Doctor leaned over the counter and grabbed the mini legal pad Renee had been using, and the pen. He wrote down the Gladstones' names.

"I met them earlier," Martha muttered to the Doctor. "Vincent's friends."

"One of the fireside folk?" he asked, cocking an eyebrow discreetly. She nodded.

"Lillian Rabb," Renee said, reacting to a boarding pass found in a pocket of some pink luggage.

Martha caught the Doctor's eye again with meaningful urgency. "Another one?" he mouthed. She nodded again. She bit her lip with nervousness.

"This one is Gregory Stevenson," Frank said. "And I'd bet that one of these others is his Twinkie."

Martha turned her back on the counter and leaned against it looking as though she had the weight of the world on her shoulders.

"Erm, we're going to go back up to our room," the Doctor said, taking Martha by the hand. "Don't worry about the heat. We'll give it another go at fixing it."

Ignoring him completely, Frank pointed at something the Doctor couldn't see and asked, "What's that?"

Renee reached under the counter and turned up the volume on a small television that the Doctor hadn't noticed before.

"Tonight in Vail, there are fifteen more reports of what's being called Mad Red, the virus that has attacked Tahiti and Brazil before us. Ten of those reports came from the Vail Mountain Lodge, the domain of local entrepreneur Walter Morritz, who was committed yesterday with a serious case of Mad Red. The other five are said to have been guests at a campground, just inside the town limits. Two middle-aged men and three children have been hospitalized with mild cases which began to manifest just after dark. Physicians around the globe are still baffled as to the cause, as well as why it has struck in four seemingly random places."

The Doctor and Martha looked at each other. "Four?" they said in unison.

"Well, you knew it was coming, it was just a question of when," he commented, almost without moving his lips.

"And where," she sighed. "Do they say?"

Renee looked at them strangely, and turned it up.

"...reports from Cairo are slow coming, but serious. Already, more than five hundred cases have been recorded, and it is spreading."

"Cairo?" the Doctor screeched. "Seriously. Cairo?"

"That doesn't make any sense either," Martha said. "What are the odds that there's a plant that grows in the rain forest in Brazil, the tropics of Tahiti, in the Sonoma Valley or Vail _and Cairo_? We might as well be talking about different worlds."

He stared at the linoleum beyond Renee's feet. "Something isn't right here," he murmured. "Something is telling me we've been going about this all wrong."

"What are you two talking about?" asked Frank.

"Yeah, what do you guys do?" Renee chimed in.

"We're doctors," Martha answered.

"Are you working on this Mad Red thing?" Renee asked excitedly.

Martha nodded, without really realizing it. She barely noticed Renee was there now – she was interested in the Doctor's brain.

"Let's go up," he said. And he grabbed her hand and went up.

"What are we doing?"

"I need to pace."

* * *

He paced. She watched and listened.

"There are a couple of species of cactus that could possibly grow in all these regions, but it grows in small quantities, never enough to put out this kind of oxygen, enough to contaminate entire hotels, entire towns," he was saying. "Maybe a few flowers, but again, too small, too isolated, and why would it be inside the hotel? Oh!" he stopped short. "No."

He continued to pace.

"Oh!" he stopped sort again. "The Yoxmo Brucklin Orchid!"

"Yeah?"

"No! Blimey! It doesn't grow on Earth, only on class two planets."

"Oh."

"No, no, no... I don't think it's that. I don't think it's to do with plants at all. I think we're just thick, Martha, and we have to get out of our heads for a bit."

She furrowed her brow. She wasn't sure what his rantings meant for the wine, but she wasn't going to ask just now.

"Think, think, think!" he told himself, banging both hands on his temples. The pacing culminated in a mad leap for the television remote. "I have to hear it again."

A report came on the television from CNN. Appallingly, they were showing footage of the wildest, scariest red-faced victim they could find. The Doctor was unable even to tell if the victim was male or female, adult or child. He or she snarled at the television, its face red and waxy like plastic, its eyes completely glazed over in black. It snarled and stared, its teeth were bared like a snake's.

_Oh, no no no no..._ he thought. _Why didn't I see it before?_

The anchorman's voice narrated the footage. "That was eleven-year-old Jessica Pelham, just a few moments ago. She was brought in to a hospital in Vail, Colorado with a minor case of the so-called Mad Red virus. Quickly, it has progressed into the intense case you see here. The girl had been camping with her mother, father and younger brother."

The next image on the screen was a woman crying. The caption underneath said, _Marlene Pelham, Jessica Pelham's mother._ "I should have left her..." the mother was sobbing. "I should have left her home with my parents, like I said! He was wrong! He was wrong, we shouldn't have taken her with us! We should have left her!" She became hysterical and fell into the arms of a man at her side. Mercifully, the camera turned away, and the anchorman appeared on the screen.

When Martha looked at the Doctor, he was stoically silent. He stood like stone with his arms crossed and his eyes blazing. His jaw was tightly-set and determination practically oozed through his pores. She didn't have to ask, he simply growled, "I know what's causing it."


	9. Chapter 9

NINE

The Doctor stood in the console room, arms crossed tightly across his chest, jaw set slightly askew, staring blankly at the controls. He had sent Martha into the library on the upper floor of their bedroom to bring back any books she could find on the constitution of the Earth. He was fairly certain that she wouldn't find much of anything useful – not written in any language she could understand, anyway. But it didn't hurt to try. Most people believed that the centre of the Earth contained liquid magma and what was in-between was an amalgam of layered rock. The Doctor, as usual, knew differently, but he wasn't sure if any of it had been documented.

Besides, he needed this time to calm down. And Martha, for her part, probably knew it, and had gone quietly. He wouldn't have been surprised to find her sitting in their bedroom folding laundry or doing something entirely unrelated to research. His mighty brain was flooded, and she could sense it. She always could. She couldn't always tell with what, but could see that it was time to back off and let the Doctor stew. It was okay, because they trusted each other. They both knew that eventually, he'd tell her what was on his mind. He just needed to... delineate.

He was filled with anger and pain and doubt, memories of murder, of a mother screaming for her children. The image of Jessica Pelham on TV had sparked something. It had been dormant for a while, a memory from a lonely time, a time of grief and loss which Martha's presence in his life had helped to mend. But it was back, in living colour – that shiny red face, the black eyes, the vicious snarl. And when Jessica's mother had come on with her own grief, that unique, crippling pain reserved for parents whose children are in peril, the same dormant memory was provoked, along with a million others.

"Doctor?" Martha asked, carefully treading into the console room. "I didn't find anything."

He sighed, but said nothing. He nodded almost imperceptibly, and his eyes closed momentarily.

She came around the console and stood close to him. She put her hand against his chest and asked, "What do you need from me?"

It was the perfect question. It was devoid of pressure to speak about painful memories, it gave no hint that she was absolutely dying to know what was causing Mad Red, it indicated that she was on his side, that his agenda, whatever it may be, was hers as well.

He opened his eyes and found her looking at him with worry. He took her hand. "Just listen," he whispered, and kissed her palm.

She took a step back and leaned against the console. He leaned against a railing, facing her, his stony expression unchanged.

"Obviously you know," he began. "When I saw Jessica Pelham on the television, I recognised the mark of a particular species, which I had missed before. But part of the reason I saw it then was her mother."

Martha nodded, and said nothing. The mother's grief carried weight for her as well, as she suddenly had more sympathy for her own sometimes suffocating mum.

"And I saw other things also. I saw... I remembered..." he stopped. He seemed to be catching his breath, trying to pull his emotions under control. "Martha, I've killed before."

"I know," she said, softly, honestly. She got ready to take a big detour from the Mad Red situation.

He took a deep breath. "When I received that call to come home, I was travelling with someone. I told you this already. Her name was Thisa. That was a variation on the word for 'treasure' in Ancient Greek. And... I brought her home with me," he said. "Jessica's mum on the TV brought it all back. I should have left her."

Martha's heart sank. "Oh, Doctor."

"I should have sent her to the Shadow Proclamation to look after her, but I made the decision to bring her with me." His eyes were wide and alarmed now, his face showed real fear.

"When we arrived," he continued. "On Gallifrey, I mean, the Citadel was teeming with Daleks. They were everywhere, it looked like an ant farm. We hovered over it in the TARDIS and looked down. They even tried to shoot us out of the sky, but at the time, the TARDISes were a network of sorts, called The Cloister. Their will enveloped us in a telepathic field.

"We spent several days in the TARDIS, orbiting around the planet. I tried different things from inside. I tried to use the Cloister to break the Daleks' will, I tried to remotely rejuvenate the weapons the Time Lords had. I even tried to get in touch with the Daleks and negotiate... anything to avoid..." he exhaled heavily and swallowed hard. "I didn't want to land, because I was on the outside, thought I could use it to my advantage. Turns out… I did."

He began walking slowly around the console, his eyes travelling over the controls, up the column of light, to the TARDIS' ceiling and back again. As of right now, they were still sitting in a hotel basement in Vail, Colorado. The Doctor fired up the vehicle and the grinding began. Martha assumed that this was the last she'd hear of the Time War for a while.

But as the grinding continued and the Doctor set about the quotidian workings involved in bringing an exhausted TARDIS in for a safe landing, he began talking again. She took a seat on the navigator's chair and listened. "But within days of our arrival, the city fell into disrepair. Everything I had done had failed, and the Daleks' hold became stronger. No one was allowed to leave the planet or the time period, all travel was restricted, the TARDISes were kept imprisoned within a psychic dampening field. The Citadel stood, though, and…"

There was a long pause. It's like he was winding up for the fatal blow.

"She wanted to help. Thisa wanted to help. She had a position within the council, and she was... well," he smiled. "She was a bit talented at psychic negotiations and tactical mind-control. She was so reluctant to see anyone die, even the Daleks. She was a bit like her father that way. She just wanted so badly for everything to end peacefully, and to end the war without any bloodshed. So I sent her in. I asked the Time Lords to teleport her into the Citadel, and they did."

"She was a Time Lord?" Martha asked.

He nodded. And suddenly, he was catatonic again.

Slowly, he reached out and pointed to a spot on the floor. Almost without moving his lips, he said, "She stood there. I gave her a hug, and she was gone from that spot, just there. And I never saw her again."

The TARDIS powered down, and the Doctor and Martha barely noticed. Martha was still confused about many things, but she was more in touch with the Doctor's grief than she had ever been. She felt it more completely, understood it better than she ever had. Another Time Lord had been with him at the time, and he'd let her go. At least if he'd kept her with him, he wouldn't have to be the last of his kind. He wouldn't carry the burden of being the only being in existence who had perspective on the whole of time and space, and the oscillations of the universe itself. And as always when she began to feel closer to him, she wanted to _be _closer. She stepped toward him, and he took her in a tight embrace. He kissed the top of her head and said, "We're in Cairo."

"Yeah."

* * *

They both needed some sleep, but it wasn't the time. Egypt was already into the next morning when they arrived, and the Doctor and Martha were running on hours of adrenaline-soaked action, and there was no ending in sight. Martha desperately wished that they had, at least, gotten to rest in Vail. At this point in their relationship, though, given the choice between sleeping and making love, they always chose the latter. And they'd even been interrupted in trying to do that.

Each time there was a new opening-up, a new revelation about the Time War, Martha felt that they should be alone and silent for a bit. She wondered if it was wrong that she wanted to be all naked and warm with the Doctor just after he had divulged his most guarded and coldest of secrets. But before stepping outside the TARDIS, he gave her one of those kisses that weakened her knees and held a promise. He cocked an eyebrow before opening the door, and she almost passed out from the blast of that one, simple, unspoken innuendo.

Cairo buzzed. Much like Vail, there were no outward signs of plague or distress, just tourists, marketers, locals and their pets bustling and buying. The Doctor was on some sort of mission, and he pulled Martha through the streets of Cairo behind him, occasionally causing her to trip.

"Doctor, slow down, I can't keep up," she complained.

"I'm sorry. I just have to get there."

"Where?"

"To the hospital," he answered.

"What's the link, though? Tahiti had the oxygen tanks, Brazil had the rain forest, Colorado had that one hotel... what's it going to be in Cairo?"

"Well, if I'm right, then it's everywhere, and it'll be mostly the locals," he said. "That's why we have to go to hospital."

It didn't make much sense to her, but the Doctor was a bit high strung at the moment, and he wasn't responding to any question. She simply followed, taking two steps for every one that he took.

They took a shortcut down an alley, and found a nearly deserted city square. The shops around seemed to have closed long ago, and the area in the middle had been usurped as a temporary place to keep the sick and dying. A cluster of green tents acted as a make-shift care facility, as the hospitals had begun to fill up rather quickly over the past few days. As soon as they entered the area, Martha could hear the familiar snarling of the afflicted Mad Red patients, and she looked to the side and saw an area cordoned off with chainlink, guarded by a militaristic sort, keeping at least fifteen to twenty red-faced individuals in check.

The doctors looked quite western – they wore white coats, grey or brown trousers and many of them had pocket protectors, glasses, plaid shirts and other decidedly non-Egyptian accoutrements. Among the nurses, there were quite a few traditional Muslim veils, but the compassion, the intelligence, the pain was in their eyes, and was universal.

"Excuse me," the Doctor said to a man in a white coat. This man had all the accessories, including the pocket protector, glasses and plaid. The Doctor flashed his psychic paper. "I'm Dr. John Smith, I work for the medical council of Great Britain, and this is my colleague, Martha Jones. I've come to study this disease, find out how to keep it from spreading into Europe and if possible, try to help you stop the spread here."

"Well, good luck," said the man. "We have no idea where it's started, no idea what's causing it and no idea how it's spread."

"Do you mind my asking," the Doctor said. "Have most of the patients come from the poorer parts of the city?"

"Of course, that's the way it always is."

"Would you mind giving me a more precise run-down of the demographic here? My colleague will take notes."

Martha looked up at him with surprise and disdain. What was she, his secretary? And what did he think, that she had taken her trusty university student's rucksack with her when she'd left the TARDIS and would be able to produce a notebook and pen?

"May I see your credentials again, please?" asked the local doctor.

"Certainly," the Time Lord answered, producing once again his psychic paper. The Egyptian examined it thoroughly, doing everything but lick it, and finally returned it.

"I'm sorry," he said. "You can't be too careful. My name is Dr. Fifal, I'm the chief of this facility, such as it is."

"How long has this facility been running?" asked the Doctor.

Fifal answered, "Oh, maybe six months. The hospitals have been overcrowded for a long time. This Mad Red business has just made it worse."

"Why are they sending the hard cases to you?"

"They're not. The really hard cases are in psychiatric facilities as much as they can be," Fifal told him. "These are medium-to-sub-severe cases. It's a bloody subtle distinction if you ask me."

"Indeed," the Doctor agreed, watching the patients snarling and drooling over what looked like a former turkey leg.

"Anyway," said Fifal. "You wanted demographics. Very well. In this particular cage, there are five men, seven women, and nine children. Two girls and seven boys. There are some family groups here, some unrelated entirely. Most of them come from what we call 'Islamic Cairo,' which is the poorer section of the city. The remaining come from a smattering of middle-class and industrial areas. This is just one sampling from one facility of course, but across the board, across the city, it seems to be affecting men and women equally, adults and children proportionally, but much more often the poor than the rich."

"Mmm," the Doctor sighed. "That's not true of the other cities it has affected, do you know?"

"Yes," said Fifal. "I heard that it has attacked quite a posh town in America. So why the misfortune here? These people cannot afford to lose their breadwinners, to care for family members who cannot care for themselves. They can barely keep food on the table – does Britain have any ideas, Doctor?"

The Doctor sighed. "It's in the water."

"Excuse me?"

"Send for the press, tell them to spread the word. The virus, the Mad Red is in the water. The plain old tap water that gets piped from the Nile into everyone's home is contaminated."

Fifal crossed his arms with suspicion. "What is your evidence?"

"I don't have it yet," admitted the Doctor. "Nothing tangible anyway. Just trust me. It's imperative that people not drink the Nile water until further notice!"

Fifal continued to be suspcicious, so the Doctor asked, "What harm could it do?"

"It could ruin my career," Fifal answered.

"Then release the statement anonymously," the Doctor insisted. "Just find a way, have you got that?"

"Yes," Fifal said. "Anything pro-active, I suppose."

"Brilliant. In the meantime, would you mind finding me a water sample?"


	10. Chapter 10

TEN

Martha crashed for a couple of hours. She was exhausted. Time was all wonky inside the TARDIS, of course, but she estimated that they had been on the go for about eighteen hours. As she closed her eyes, she laughed to herself. She'd begun the day in a bikini, had spent time in the rain forest, and the bulk of it in ski country U.S.A. Now, she was in a back-alley of an ancient city in northern Africa. Life had a topsy turvy way. Well, life with the Doctor, anyway.

When she returned to the console room a bit refreshed, the Doctor was very carefully pouring Fifal's water sample into a narrow test tube that seemed to be attached to an arm of the TARDIS.

"Feel a bit better?" he asked.

"A bit," she replied. "But I'll still need an awfully good night's sleep when this is all over. And a shower."

_And a good, healing shag. Like an exorcism – release our demons,_ she thought, but she didn't say it. She didn't think it was quite the time.

She watched him pour. "So, first it's the air, now it's the water?" asked Martha.

"Take a look," he said, without looking at her, and he turned the monitor to face her.

"What's that?"

"The TARDIS is tracing an element of the Earth's interior that is not human or Earthly in origin," he said, finishing his pouring. The TARDIS seemed to swallow the sample, and the Doctor stood back and waited. He walked over to the screen to show her. "See? This is an ancient and foreign mass, old as the Earth itself."

A pink spot on the screen was forming. The middle bit was just a blob, but arms were starting to form, it seemed, as the TARDIS detected more and more. It made a loud gurgling sound as it analysed the water sample. The Doctor looked up at it, frowned, and stroked the console comfortingly.

"That's what's at the centre of the Earth?" Martha asked.

"Yep. It's a ship."

"Oh my God! What sort of ship?"

"What kind of a question is that? How many sorts of ships are there? It's meant for travelling from one place to another."

She looked at him as though she felt he were being extremely tedious. "Well, who put it there?"

"A species called the Rachnoss," he said. "It may not surprise you to learn that they were vicious creatures with shiny red faces and completely black eyes."

"Ohhh," Martha whispered. It almost came out as an exhale. "Their ship is contaminating the Earth?"

The Doctor nodded. "They had a drug. It was called Vitiatus. Well, _they _called it a drug, we called it poison. They were a peaceful enough race, used to mind their own business and stuff, until they got hold of the drug. Their faces were a warm pink, their eyes had irises and whites and pupils like yours and mine. But the entire population eventually became addicted to the drug because it made them strong and powerful and euphoric. But it also made them vicious and bloodthirsty and unreasonable, so the Time Lords drove them into exile and they nested at the center of a newly-forming planet: this one. That was before my time, of course."

Martha nodded, still staring at the screen.

"They kept enormous reserves of Vitiatus on their spacecraft... do you see those arms coming off the centre of the blob there on the screen?"

"Yeah."

"I'm pretty sure five of those are stuffed with their supply of Vitiatus. It's, well... leaking now. Probably started happening just a few days ago."

"Five arms?" she asked, more of herself than of him. "Let me guess. One of them extends out to where Tahiti is, another to Brazil, another to Colorado, another to Egypt..."

"And that means there's one more. I'm guessing it will be in central Asia someplace, but we'll have to wait and see. And blimey, that one will be tricky."

"Why?"

He took a deep breath. "Well, believe it or not, it's the Rachnoss ship that causes the Earth to be centred upon the elements."

"You mean like Hydrogen and Oxygen?"

"No, not those elements. I mean air, earth, fire, water."

She raised her eyebrows with curiosity and a dawning realisation. "Oh, _those_ elements."

"The Rachnoss' planet operated entirely on five things: air, dirt, fire, water... and a mysterious fifth element that no-one has ever been able to decipher. Everything they were, everything they had, everything about them was a balance of those five things, including their transport."

Martha stood with her mouth open. Her brain was catching up slowly. Finally, she said, "The _air_ in Tahiti was contaminated."

"Yes, because the _air_ compartment of the ship is leaking Vitiatum into that part of the Earth. And in Brazil, it was in the dirt, the earth, and the trees in the rainforest were leeching the Vitiatum and putting back out as oxygen. That's why it looked like the air there was contaminated too. Well, it was, but only by way of the soil."

"And," Martha said, her eyes lighting up. "That's why the TARDIS said it was every species of tree!"

He smiled at her, and nodded once. "In Vail..." he began.

"It was the fire."

"Yes. It afflicted people who had close proximity to fire for long periods. Campers and socialites who hung about in posh lodges with huge fireplaces for days on end, they were the ones taken in. Walter Morritz got the brunt of it because he was literally down there in the common room every night of the season, standing two feet away from the fire."

She exhaled with awe. "And here in Egypt..."

As if to finish her thought, the TARDIS' arm appeared again with an empty test tube. A small screen read-out in Gallifreyan displayed some results. The Doctor glanced at it, and said, not surprised, "It's in the water."

"We were told not to drink the water in Cairo when we were here as kids," she said.

"Good advice. The water here isn't great anyway, and the tourists and upper-classes don't drink it, they import bottled water from Europe or Asia. But the poorer classes, they have no choice but to drink from the taps, and... there you have it. That's why there seems to be such a clear demographic line in Cairo."

"So, if you're right, and the next 'drop site' is in central Asia, we don't even know how it's going to be deployed, do we? If no no-one has ever worked out the fifth element..."

"Then we just have to jump in and see. We'll let the TARDIS guide us, and hope for the best."

"Do you think it's something tangible? Like wood or stone?"

"Could be anything," he said. "But the other four elements are movable, oscillating. Not to mention the mystery surrounding it... it's doubtful that it's something as stationery or as banal as stone."

"Hm," she sniffed. "This is rubbish."

"Yeah. We'll just have to keep an eye out for new reports of disease."

Martha lit up. "But wait! Maybe we don't need to. It's not really a disease at all, is it? It's a high. Highs wear off, don't they?"

"Yes, that's the good news. Unfortunately, there is bad news: we don't know how long the supply of Vitiatum will last. And when it does run out, what will the withdrawal symptoms be like?" He raised an eyebrow, which indicated _pretty bloody ugly._

"Well," she contemplated, leaning against a rail. "If the Rachnoss have been down there for billions of years, since the beginning of the Earth, how much longer _can_ the supply last?"

"They haven't been using it the whole time," he explained. "They were sort of... incubating for a long, long time."

"They were?"

"Yes."

"Why past tense? No more incubating?"

"No."

She looked closely at the screen again. "There's no one left alive down there?"

"Not anymore, no," he answered stoically.

"What killed them, time?"

He sighed. "They drowned."

"Drowned? At the centre of the Earth, they drowned?"

"Yes."

"That's mad."

"I agree."

"Doctor?"

"Yes?"

"Why won't you look at me?"

He didn't answer. He said, "We have bigger problems now, though, because as you've said, they probably brought a supply that would last billions of years, and until a few days ago, it's gone unused. By the time it does run out, the Earth will be swallowed up by the sun, and between now and then, the entire human population could be affected and have killed each other."

"So shouldn't we be trying to find an antidote, or trying to fix the leak or something, instead of trying to work out which city is going to explode next?" she asked.

"But the thing is, Martha, everything about the Rachnoss is a balance of the five elements. If we can stop the final spread, the one deployed through the fifth element, then we can throw the whole thing off-balance. I think that would force the drug itself into retreat, and possibly cause the Rachnoss ship to power down and lie dormant until... well, until the day the Earth dies."

"Okay then," she said. "I'll meet you in front of the telly in fifteen minutes. I'm going to make myself a sandwich, want one?"


	11. Chapter 11

**OKAY KIDS. GET READY FOR SOME PUNCH TO BE PACKED!**

**I DO NOT WANT THE NAUGHTY BET TO BE DROWNED IN THE SEA OF GREAT SORROW, SO PLEASE DO NOT LEAVE THIS CHAPTER ONLY REMEMBERING THE WEEPY STUFF!**

* * *

ELEVEN

As BBC News prattled on about a corporate giant who had gone mysteriously bankrupt while taking his cronies on long trips to the Caribbean, a computer screen blipped beside the television. It showed a display of the ever-growing pink blob with arms at the centre of the Earth. Two of the arms were now fully formed on the screen, the two in Brazil and Egypt. The Colorado and Tahiti arms were still being detected, and the fifth, it seemed, _was _going to deploy in central Asia, but it was not yet clear precisely where.

Martha stared at it in disbelief. She could not believe that _this _was what was on the inside of her home planet. How had the scientists got it so wrong? How could astronomers not have detected something spacey within the Earth's crust? How is it that the ship wasn't giving off radiation, as well as leaking a drug into the Earth's elements? And how the hell do you _drown_ when you're in a ship at the centre of the Earth?

The Doctor entered the room with the sandwiches. He'd offered to do it when Martha mentioned it, and she had agreed to let him, without too much argument.

"Thanks," she said, taking her plate. "I would have done it, you know."

"I know," he said. "I just wanted to be nice."

She looked at him with a little surprise. "You _are _nice."

"I haven't been called that very many times," he said.

She ran her free hand through his thick shock of dark hair. "Well, here it comes again, are you ready? _You are a very, very nice man_. And you're sexy." She smiled, pleased with herself.

It was an inexplicably emotional moment for the Doctor. He knew Martha was just being cute (though sincere), but something so simple to a human was often watershed for a Time Lord. For _this _Time Lord, anyway. He wasn't sure why he felt he needed to mask this for Martha's benefit, but he did, and as such, dug into his sandwich with gusto.

He'd made tomato-mozzarella sandwiches on focaccia with olive oil and basil. He had sliced some peaches and laid them out nicely on the sides of the plate and brought a pot of tea from a plug-in near where they were sitting. Martha had just planned to throw some jam sandwiches together, but she wasn't about to complain. She hadn't eaten since that small bite of strawberry and brie in Vail with the unfortunate Vincent Bidwell, and she hadn't realised how hungry she'd become. She was so grateful for this, she all but moaned with satisfaction.

She glanced at the computer screen, and commented through a mouthful of focaccia, "Vail is almost complete. Central Asia's coming along too." She chewed and swallowed. "I've been laying odds in my head as to who will identify the next site first, the world press or the TARDIS."

"Oh, the TARDIS, hands-down," the Doctor said, matter-of-factly, also speaking through a mouthful.

"But you're not exactly an objective party, are you?"

He looked at her with amusement. He licked two of his fingers. "Care to make it interesting?"

She smiled back, flirting a bit. "What did you have in mind?"

"If I win, and the TARDIS works it out before the media does, then you have to..." he leaned forward and whispered something in her ear that made her blush.

Her jaw dropped, and she said, "Doctor! You are _definitely_ washing your mouth out with soap before kissing me again!"

He looked at her with barely contained glee. "How 'bout it?"

She thought about it, still blushing a bit. "What if I win?"

"Name your poison."

"Okay," she said slowly. "If the BBC reports it first, then you have to..." and now it was her turn to whisper in his ear.

He pulled away and looked at her with questioning eyes. "There are over eight thousand different symbols in the Gallifreyan alphabet. That could take days."

"Even better," she chirped, smiling. "Is it a deal, then?"

In lieu of an answer, he offered his hand. They shook on it, looking lustfully into each others' eyes. Truthfully, neither of them cared who won the bet – everyone wins either way, and they both knew it.

They both sat back again and distractedly carried on with their sandwiches.

"I just can't believe this," she commented, staring at the slowly growing Rachnoss star in the middle of the Earth. "This thing has really been there the whole time? Through the amoebae and continental drift the Australopithecus and the... 1980's?"

"Yep. The whole time."

"All that time, and then one day they just drowned? I just don't get it, Doctor."

He sighed. He looked over at her and searched for any indication that she suspected the truth. He found nothing to betray her feelings to that end, and that actually made him feel worse. Clearly, the question of how the Rachnoss offspring were killed was on her mind, and he _could _go on ignoring it, he could make something up, he could blame it on a natural phenomenon. But he was trying to turn over a new leaf in the honesty department, he was trying to let Martha in, become closer to her, let go of the anger so he could love her from a place of light and fulfilment.

He sighed again.

"It was me, Martha," he said quietly. "I drowned them."

"What?" she asked, stunned.

"I drowned the Rachnoss. There is no one left alive on that ship to stop the leakage of the Vitiatum because I killed them all."

Martha stared at him with wonder. "Were they part of the Time War as well? Is that why they were sent into exile by the Time Lords?"

"No, that happened almost five billion years ago. The Time War was... more recent. And when I killed the Rachnoss, it was more recent even than that."

"How recent?"

"One month before we met."

"Before you and I met?"

"Yes. Remember when we were in that room in the hospital with the computers, and I swore to you that I hadn't been looking for trouble?"

"Vaguely. Sorry, it was a weird day."

"Well, it was because I'd been lying low, trying to stay out of the fray for a bit. I'd gone a bit insane with the Rachnoss and a friend of mine helped me see that I'd gone too far. And that I needed someone in my life to keep me grounded. To tell me to stop, to keep me connected to humanity."

The wonder continued to radiate from Martha's face. She had been prepared to hear about atrocities he may have committed in the Time War, but not so close to home, so close to _her._ She had to know something else, something that may have seemed superficial, but somehow important to her. "What did you look like then?"

"Excuse me?"

"What did you look like? Have you regenerated since then?"

"I looked exactly like I do now. I was in _this _body, with _this _hair and face and teeth and personality." He couldn't look at her as he said this. He knew that his companions could come to terms with his past if and when they knew he'd been 'a different man' back then, especially because his personality changes with each regeneration. But this, he wasn't sure she'd be able to recover from.

For her part, she was having trouble picturing it. _Her _Doctor, the man who had tried to show mercy to the last Dalek in Manhattan, in the name of not committing genocide... the eyes, mouth, ears, freckles, hair and _disposition_ she loved had been warped into a murderous rage and drowned an entire population of incubating Rachnoss. She tried to imagine her Doctor, stony and insane and determined, and the amount of water it must take to drown beings who live four thousand miles below the surface of the Earth. It must have been chaos.

"What were they trying to do?" she wondered.

"They had used a woman called Donna and doused her with a kind of magnetic particle. That re-animated the ship at the centre of the Earth, and the Rachnoss children were on their way back up to devour the human race. I offered the Empress a chance to flee, but she refused. So I flooded the hole and drowned them."

"Oh my God," she whispered. "Why couldn't you just seal off the hole somehow?"

"That occurred to me later," he confessed. "But at the time, I was blind with fury. I was heartbroken and angry and just... pissed off and dangerous. I'd just lost Rose, had just given up trying to find a way through to her side of the void when Donna appeared. The whole episode scared her so badly, I'd scared her so badly, she refused to travel with me after that. As it was, she kept asking me what had happened to Rose. I'm pretty sure she was convinced I'd killed her."

"And then she told you that you need someone."

"Yeah. She saved my life that day, Martha. She stopped me from staying too long and drowning myself along with the Rachnoss, and she kept me from being alone, by implanting a conscious need. I travel with whomever I'm drawn to, but had never considered the _need _for a companion before."

They sat in silence for a long time. Martha's mind was darting all over the place. She was wondering about regeneration and war and heartbreak and murder and all that was going on in the Doctor's mind in those first nine months they were together before they'd opened up to each other. She had just been travelling, seeing it all, taking it all in and enjoying herself while all that turmoil was going on beneath the surface of the Doctor's mind. She'd seen the first hint when they were on New Earth and he'd confessed he'd lied to her about his home planet. But still, she'd been so caught up in her adolescent unrequited love business, she'd managed to convince herself it was the most angst happening inside the TARDIS. She felt almost ashamed for feeling so sorry for herself all that time.

Again, lost in her own reverie, she was startled when the Doctor began speaking. He was staring at the floor and his face was dead. "The Daleks blew the Citadel to smithereens with no warning. Everyone who lived there was still inside – along with Thisa. And I had let her go."

This change in gears was a surprise to her, but she listened. He had confessed to killing the Rachnoss in anger, what exactly had caused this segueway?

She tried to be helpful. "Well, you said she was like her father," Martha said. "Talented like him. Was she the daughter of someone important?"

He nodded.

"Perhaps while she was helping with negotiations, she got to see her family again. You gave her that."

"She didn't die with her family," he told her. "She died with a bunch of stuffed-shirt strangers who did not understand her."

"I'm sorry," she whispered. It was a condolence as well as an apology for forcing him to say it. She wondered if she should even bother trying to console him with such banal assumptions.

"The glass dome over the Citadel fell, and the flames escaped into the mountains surrounding. And Gallifrey..." he choked. "...and Gallifrey began to burn. First the Citadel, then the city, the mountains of Solace and Solitude... and I watched."

Martha moved close to him and took his hand. She kissed it and held it tightly in her lap as she listened.

"Any citizens surviving in the city were evacuated by the Daleks and taken away, aboard the Mastership. They were to be enslaved, the cleverest ones converted to Dalek. A Time Lord mind with a Dalek's disposition – now there is something that could have destroyed life as we know it in the universe."

Martha was reminded of their brief stay in New York, 1930. The hybrids were made benign by diluting the Dalek force with conscious Time Lord DNA and an inherently human core. But he was right. Purely distilled Time Lord knowledge and intelligence with all emotion and compassion removed... she shuddered.

"By then, the Cloister, the collective TARDIS consciousnesses, had been destroyed inside the Citadel. I had the only living TARDIS left." He looked around the room and absently stroked the arm of the sofa, a little piece of his trusted vessel. "I tried to save my planet. I landed in the plains and used everything I had to keep the flames at bay… wind, rain, sand, my will. Nothing worked. The flames burned too hot and too strong, and eventually, I just... I had to get out of there. There was nothing else I could do. The blast on the Citadel had come _so _without warning..." he sighed. "I could have tried harder, I suppose."

"Don't do that," Martha said.

"I know. Useless, eh?"

His breathing was laboured now, ragged. His teeth were clenched, and he talked through them, holding anger back just barely. Martha squeezed his hand tighter, hoping to help him brace for whatever came next.

"I hovered above and saw my planet slowly burning... dying, just dying right before my eyes." The tears came now, he choked on every third word, and his fingers dug into the sofa's arm, and Martha's palm. "The trees and grass themselves were calling out to me, screaming. Everything was alive in those last moments, and everything was suffering."

She was crying with him now. She felt the full force of it all, the whirlwind of fire and pain and screaming he must have been bombarded with in those moments. Time Lords and TARDISes and planets and time and particles, everything is connected, everything is alive and feeling. The whole of the Doctor's body and consciousness must have been buzzing with hurt and decay and a sense of doom. And in this moment, sitting here with Martha in the TARDIS, watching BBC News, it was all coming back, perhaps for the first time ever.

"What was left of my planet was suffering and burning. What was left of my people were aboard the Dalek ship ready to be enslaved or worse," he explained, trying visibly to calm himself. "But I knew that my TARDIS had a little something of the Cloister left within her heart – a whole network of time vortexes and untempered schisms with one last big push still remaining. I discharged it, what was left of the Cloister's will, and it burned my planet whole in one stroke of a button, along with the Dalek Mastership and my people on board, swallowing the whole thing within a time-lock."

Martha exhaled a short, rough breath, and tears literally fell from her face onto their hands in her lap.

"I killed my planet, and I thought I would go with it. I was ready to go with it, die with my people. And I did," he said. "I died. For about two minutes. I hadn't been at the centre of the explosion, I'd only been taken down by the blowback, and the TARDIS saved me. I regenerated."

"What were you like then?"

"Bitter. Oh, so bitter. And angry, damaged, raw. I had nothing left to give, Martha, nothing. I tried to _feel _as little as possible, and only landed anywhere when it was absolutely necessary. Only wound up on Earth because some living plastic had found its way back here."

"I remember that," she whispered, wiping her eyes. "Department store dummies came to life."

"Yep," he said. "I followed them down into a department store basement where they had cornered a girl. That was the first human contact I'd had in... I don't know how long. First human, first humanoid, first sentient contact with anything other than the TARDIS."

"You saved her?"

"Well, I held out my hand and told her to run. But in the long run, I think she saved me."

Martha smiled. "That was Rose."

"Yes, and you know how it goes after that," he said, almost rolling his eyes with the repetition of it. "More tears, more loss, more guilt... and then there was you." He looked at her with eyes full of tears, a streaked face, and more sorrow than she had ever seen. But he managed to smile, a little glimmer of hope through the darkness hanging about him.

She touched his face, stroked his cheek. "And then there was me," she agreed.

"And oh, do I love you," he said, more tears pushing through, falling over her fingers.

"I love you too," she sobbed. She leaned forward and pressed her lips against his, sealing yet another huge revelation with an affirmation of their bond. Magnetically, they were driven to press together, to seek closure for the fissure that no longer existed, to put no daylight between them.


	12. Chapter 12

TWELVE

She felt so small at this moment, so insignificant in the grand scheme of his life. And yet, she felt a huge responsibility. After he'd lost his people, then a great love, he couldn't afford to lose anything else. The way he clung to her now, the way his lips sought to devour her, the way his arms crushed round her middle, she knew she had to be a rock. She couldn't get captured or killed or do something daft and wind up exiled. Martha Jones would be the one who wouldn't go, not until they had had a complete and fulfilling life together.

She climbed into his lap with a knee on each side of him, faced him, and continued the embrace. She buried her hands in his hair and pulled back a bit. He looked up at her, the lust having returned, having replaced the sadness. They had so long been in need of catharsis, and now that the emotional bit was over, they were ready for the physical.

"I'm not finished yet," he told her with a husky voice.

She smiled. "Nor me."

"There's so much more to tell."

"I don't doubt it," she answered, releasing his hair and beginning a slow path of kisses down the side of his face to his neck. She loosened his tie and undid the top button of his light blue dress shirt, pushing the fabric out of the way to give herself access. She used her tongue to trace loops around his jugular down toward his collarbone, and he let out a moan that seemed to come from somewhere ancient and primal. From where she sat, she felt him beginning to harden, and she smiled and tugged one more time at his hair before planting her mouth on his again.

His fingers slipped underneath the back of her shirt and crawled up her back slowly, relishing the smooth flesh underneath. He unhooked her bra, which made her giggle a little. He began to tug at her shirttail, signalling that he'd like to pull it over her head and throw it aside. She moved to let him do so, when they heard an unwelcome sound.

Behind her, the television stated, "And in other news, Mad Red has reached critical mass in Tibet. Hospitals in and around Lhasa have reported upwards of five hundred hard cases of the mysterious disease in the past twenty-four hours, and thousands of mild cases. Hospitals have been asking families to keep their mildly afflicted loved ones under lock and key, but the numbers seem to be growing so quickly, authorities are not sure how long they can sustain this system. Higher numbers have been rolling in more and more quickly each hour, and there has been no sign of dropping off."

With the Doctor's bottom lip caught between her teeth, Martha muttered, "Oh, you have _got _to be kidding me!" She pulled away and looked at him, her jaw set askew in disgust.

The Doctor himself groaned. He threw his head back against the wall, and shut his eyes tight. "World in peril. Must gather faculties..." His knuckles plunged into his eyes, and he let out a ragged "aaaaagh" sound as he inflicted upon them a bracing rubbing. When he tugged his head back up, Martha's lovely face was waiting for him, looking disgusted.

He smiled in resignation. "I guess we're not meant to..." his eyes widened and his head gestured in lieu of saying the words. "...until we crack this case."

"I can't accept that," she said crossing her arms across her chest like a child.

"Martha," the Doctor said. "Critical mass."

"Yeah! Tell me about it!"

"You heard the pretty lady on the telly."

"Right, 'cause the media never exaggerates."

He gave her a scolding look. With _those _eyes.

"Okay," she pouted, climbing off. They both stood up and looked at the television. Martha noticed that the TARDIS had not yet pinpointed the next epidemic location in central Asia. She smiled, and took the Doctor by the lapels. "The good news is, I win the bet." She planted a nice juicy smooch on him.

He groaned, this time in a whimsical way, feigning disappointment. "Damn."

"Mm-hm," she said, flirting again. "I suggest repeating the phrase _Watermelon Lillian_ about ten thousand times to get your tongue ready." She walked off toward the console room, leaving him to stare after her with the shivers.

* * *

He had taken a few moments to calm down, to re-button his jacket, re-tie his tie and make sure that _all_ surfaces were smooth before entering the console room. Martha's bra seemed to be properly back in place by the time he entered and she was staring at the screen again.

"Okay, so," he burst out as he entered, clapping once loudly. "Lhasa."

"Isn't that in China?"

"Yes, but they call it the Tibet Autonomous Region. Dalai Lama's former stomping grounds."

"Right," she said. "Let's just get this done."

Eyebrow cocked, cranking instruments on the console, he asked, "You okay?"

She slumped down on the stool. "Frustrated."

"Yeah," he smirked. "Try living a century that way."

"Not helping."

"Sorry."

The TARDIS, once again, made its signature whoosh and when it stopped, they were in Lhasa. They opened the door upon what should rightfully have been a bustling city centre, a garish tourist trap set up with shops and restaurants. But it was empty today, likely voided for fear of Mad Red.

"Blimey," Martha whispered, looking about. "This is so sad." The sun was bright, the air was crisp and cold, though, and the Doctor stepped back inside for their coats. Martha put on a leather, he climbed into his trenchcoat.

"And we can't count on the air or the dirt or the water or fire," the Doctor reminded her. "It's something else entirely now."

"The elusive fifth element," she sighed.

He took her hand, and they walked forward.

The shops looked as though they had been ransacked. The Doctor tried the door on a few of them, and they were all still unlocked. The place had been deserted as though the apocalypse had come to roost. Maybe this lot felt as though it had.

Martha peered through the window of what looked like a middle-range hair salon. On the floor, lay a normal-looking woman with a small gash on her forehead.

"Doctor!" Martha cried out. "I'm going in!"

She disappeared inside the salon as the Doctor, who was half a block away, jogged toward. But before he reached the spot on the pavement where Martha had stepped away, he was accosted from his left. He hadn't seen the man before, but suddenly, there he was, six inches from the Doctor's face. Well, he would have been if he'd been a lot taller, anyway.

"Hello," the man said, wide-eyed, desperate.

The Doctor was tripped up in his tracks, and his face scrunched as he stopped and said, "Hello yourself." He glanced up at the door through which Martha had gone, willing her not to go anywhere else.

The man had a closely-shaved head. The Doctor looked down at the man's garments, and saw that he was wearing a bright orange and yellow robe. A Buddhhist monk. In Tibet. Hey, go figure.

"You are a doctor, did I hear that correctly?" asked the monk.

"Er, yes," the Doctor replied. "After a fashion."

"There are many who require assistance," said the monk. "You have been looking into the shops, yes?"

"Yes, and a friend of mine has gone into that one," the Doctor told him, pointing. "So, come with me, because I want to make sure she's all right."

"Yes," the monk said. "Of course."

He followed the Doctor into the hair salon, where they found Martha kneeling on the floor in front of a woman who was sitting in a shampooing chair sipping water. "Try to breathe normally, all right?" she was saying. The woman nodded and put her cup on the armrest as she concentrated on breathing.

Martha stood up and crossed the room. "Hi. I think she's got concussion," she said to the Doctor.

"What happened to her?"

"Got between an infected co-worker and a sandwich," she replied as she washed her hands in another of the shampooing sinks. She extracted a towel from the cabinet above and soaked it. She looked directly at the monk. "Hello."

He bowed. "Hello, miss." He did not look at her. He really wasn't allowed.

"What's your name, then?"

"I'm Lobsang Samten."

"Nice to meet you, I'm Martha," she said. Of the Doctor, she asked, "Did you find anyone else lucid?" She pressed the wet towel to the woman's forehead to compress the gash. The woman eventually reached up for it and held it there herself.

"No," the Doctor said. "Just him. And he sort of found me."

"Doctor," said Lobsang Samten. "I was hoping you could help. You are western. The government here mistrusts westerners, so they tell us nothing. But you... a western doctor!"

The Doctor looked at Martha and shrugged. "Well, I guess lots of planets have a west." Martha shrugged back.

"Tell me, doctor," said the monk. "What is causing this?"

"Well," the Doctor said. "It's nothing... that... well, we haven't been able to pin it down, exactly, but we're trying."

"That's what the government here is telling us, too," he said, crestfallen.

"I'm afraid this time, the government is right," the Doctor said, putting a hand on his shoulder. "But perhaps we can advance the cause. I don't suppose you know anything about the epidemic here?"

"Only in our monastery," Lobsang Samten told him. "I am trained in nursing. It's what I did before I came to the meditative way of life. They sent me into the city to try and help."

"What's happening in your monastery?" asked Martha. "Aren't there any cases?"

"Yes, a few," he answered. "But we cannot help them. I was sent down here to do as you are doing, to help those who have been injured in the chaos. There do not seem to be many. She is the only one I have seen, and it seems as though you have cared for her own your own, Martha."

"You actually have cases of Mad Red holed up in the monastery?" asked the Doctor, seeming a bit too excited for the occasion.

"Yes, sir. Four cases."

"What were they doing when they began showing symptoms?"

"Nothing," the monk told him. "It's our way of life. We meditate, we do nothing, we take ourselves out of the karmic cycle. We want nothing, we affect nothing."

"Hm," the Doctor muttered, walking contemplatively toward Martha. "The Rachnoss were not an overly meditative society. It's unlikely that's the cause."

"But you said they were peaceable until the drug," she whispered.

"Lobsang Samten," the Doctor said. "How many monks in your order?"

"Thirty-seven."

The Doctor looked back at Martha. "Well, if it's meditation, then why only four monks out of thirty-seven?"

"Funny thing was," the monk began, thinking. "Our order, all the monasteries, in fact, stayed clean for a few days while the rest of the town went insane with Mad Red. And then, yesterday..."

"What? What happened?" asked the Doctor softly.

"Well, we have a pair of brothers in our monastery," said Lobsang Samten. "Proper brothers, I mean. Blood brothers. Their elderly parents came for a visit yesterday. As they were saying hello, their demeanours changed, and by the time they had taken lunch together... well, they were lost. The Mad Red had them."

"All of them?"

"Yes, all four of them. The two brothers who are monks, and their parents."

"And no other monks?"

"No, not in our order."

The Doctor stared at him contemplatively for a bit. He approached the woman in the chair, sipping water. "What's your name, love?"

"Kumiko," she answered, putting her hands in her lap. The gash on her forehead appeared to have stopped bleeding.

"Japanese," the Doctor commented. "Long way from home, eh?"

"Yes," she said. "I came here with my fiancé three years ago. He was Chinese and the government posted him here. But he left me. And I'm still here." She sighed heavily.

"What does your family think of that?"

"I only have one brother back in Japan, and we don't speak. My parents are dead, I never had children. It's just me."

"Have you felt any symptoms? Any facial discolouration, any change in your eyesight?" he asked, shining the sonic in her eyes like a physician's scope.

She flinched and instinctively pushed him away. "No, nothing."

"Is your appetite normal?" he wanted to know.

"Yes, as far as I can tell."

The Doctor turned, his face alive with an idea, and faced Martha and Lobsang Samten. He approached the monk and put his hands on his upper arms emphatically. "Go back to the monastery. Tell your brethren not to allow any more family members onto the grounds until this thing gets sorted. Then, tell other monasteries the same thing. Just live your regular, zen, isolated lives, all right?"

"All right," Lobsang Samten agreed. "But why?"


	13. Chapter 13

THIRTEEN

Desperate times cause people to take deseprate measures, and act a bit out-of-character. Trouble was, Martha was still a little bit in the dark concernng just how _desperate _a time it was. As they made their way down some back alleys of Lhasa, the Doctor's eyes were wide and manic, his teeth were bared and he seemed on the edge of something.

"Where are we going?" she asked, jogging to keep up, her arm being pulled hard by his frenzied need to advance somewhere.

"Up into the mountains."

He ducked in through the back of a store whose sign read "hardware." She didn't follow, she just watched him rummage around among the backstock.

He emerged with a sledgehammer.

She looked at the hammer with wonder, but decided to ignore it. "Okay, erm..." she said. "Why?"

"I can't say, Martha," he insisted. "If I say it... if I put it into words, then I'll lose my nerve to _do_ it."

"Doctor!" she cried out. He and was jogging now, which meant she had to run. "Slow down! You're going to wear me out."

"I'm sorry, love," he told her, not breaking his stride. "It'll be over in twenty minutes, I promise. Just try and stay with me."

They entered a narrow alley where there must have been at least fifty scooters and motorbikes parked along the walk. And then, he did something she had never seen him do. He selected a motorbike, the studiest-looking one he could find, sonicked the engine alive and threw up the kickstand. He climbed on, laid the sledgehammer across his lap and looked at her expectantly.

She stood and glared at him in disbelief. "Have you lost your mind?"

"Yes, a little." Normally, when he said things like this, he smiled. Not this time. Clearly, he truly believed and was acknowledging that he'd gone a little bit barmy.

"You're stealing a motorbike?"

"I'm going to return it."

"Seriously?"

"Seriously. Hop on."

"You know, normally, this would be kind of a turn-on, but you're sort of scaring me."

"Martha, I will explain everything, I promise. But right now, I have a job to do. Please come with me."

Reluctantly, Martha approached the bike and awkwardly swung one leg over. She settled herself upon the curved seat and held the Doctor tightly around the waist.

"All right?" he asked.

"All right."

With that, the bike took off down the alley, and after a few twists and turns, they found themselves on a road climbing the mountains of Tibet. To brace against the aching cold, Martha leaned her head against the Doctor's back and she tightened her grip around his waist.

As she did this, a strange sensation came over her. Well, not that strange, considering their relationship had been deepening as a result of the Doctor's heavy revelations and their lovemaking had been thwarted twice in the past twenty-four hours. But the Doctor's body was pressed against her, all warm and on-a-mission, and her arms and legs were tight around him. This, coupled with the vibration from the bike, was driving her mad. Her hands, her palms, currently pushing against his stomach, wanted desperately to wander downward.

Her mind meandered away from the cold and the Mad Red momentarily, and she fantasised about what she would feel below his belt if she let her hands go. She imagined unzipping him and giving him the relief that _she _craved. She wondered if he would be able to stay on the road if she did that, and she was wickedly tempted to find out.

But she didn't try it. She slipped her hands under his suit coat and unconsciously dug her fingernails into his stomach through his shirt, but she stayed above the belt and unzipped nothing.

And the Doctor, for his part, was not oblivious to the phenomenon. How could he be? If possible, he felt it more acutely than she did. Yes, he had something to accomplish – he had a world to throw out of balance, but God, was he distracted. They'd been close – twice. And there she was, right now, he could feel her holding on, digging into his skin with her fingers. He knew what that meant, and he silently willed her to resist.

"Everything all right back there?" he asked.

She gulped hard. "Yes, I'm fine. You?"

"Oh yes, yes. I'm good. Smashing."

But something else was brewing just beneath the surface as well, a different kind of tension, requiring a different kind of release. How unlucky that all types of explosive repression should manifest themselves at the same time. He hoped he could reign it all under control enough to... well, he just hoped Martha would come out of this unhurt.

They climbed into the hills for another two minutes, and they came to quite a remote locale. There was a large, wide bend in the road, and the Doctor brought the motorbike to a stop. Martha climbed off, then stood shivering, and watched him push the thing behind a large tree.

He grabbed the sledgehammer, turned back toward her and put out his hand. "We'll have to hike the rest of the way." She nodded and took his hand, and when she did, he could feel her tremble with cold. "God, you're shivering."

"It's okay."

"Do you want my coat?" he asked.

"No, it's too long."

"Well, maybe once we get moving, you'll feel warmer."

She nodded again, and followed him upwards into the pine needles and rock. Another hundred yards was all they needed to gain, the Doctor said, but it felt like a hundred miles. Martha was distracted and exhausted and not wearing appropriate shoes for hiking. In addition to which, the Doctor was keeping her almost completely in the dark as to his intentions here.

"Where are we going?" she asked.

"To the Long Life Buddha shrine," he said darkly.

"What's that?"

"It's an outdoor shrine that's part of temple up here," he said. "It used to be a monastery, now it's just a tourist attraction. But it's beloved – it's considered the second most holy place in Lhasa, after the Potala Palace, of course."

"And what are we going to do there?" she asked, eyeing warily the sledgehammer dangling at his side.

He was quiet for longer than she would have liked. They reached an actual footpath, just as the forest was beginning to open up. The elevation was taking them to a place where it was harder for trees to grow.

The path flattened out momentarily, and Martha got the jump on him. She stepped in front, tripping him up just slightly.

"Doctor," she demanded. "What are we going to do at the shrine?" Again, she eyed the sledgehammer.

He saw where her eyes went. He looked at her meaningfully, and whispered, "You already know."

Her jaw dropped. "You can't," she whispered. She could not find her voice.

"It's not like I want to, Martha," he said. "But this is the fastest way to throw the elements off-balance. If we can do that, then it'll be a matter of days before the Vitiatum releases its hold on the world, and all those people go back to normal."

"How will _this_ throw the elements off-balance?"

"It just will," he said. "Now get out of my way. If I think about it too hard, I'll change my mind." He pushed past her, his forehead wrinkled with determination.

"Good!" she cried out, chasing after him again. "Good! Think about it! Change your mind! Or at least help me understand!"

"I can't right now," he snapped.

"Doctor, please! This is insane!"

He pretended not to hear her, and let his long legs carry him further up the mountain while her short ones struggled to keep up. He gained a lead on her, and eventually, she lost him. She looked up the slope and saw a giant outcrop of rock. She had no idea what was behind it, but she thought she had seen the Doctor go that direction, so she followed it.

The rock met the mountain in the form of a deep, narrow crevasse. Though, she figured that the temple must be nearby because within the crevasse was a set of steep, man-made stone steps. A metal banister had even been installed. She went up, and there, at the top of the stairs, stood the Doctor, eyes fixed. She followed his gaze to a small building, perhaps another fifteen yards away, in a flat patch.

Without speaking to her or acknowledging her, he strode toward the little building, and once again, she found herself chasing him, begging him to slow down and reconsider. She was frightened, she felt powerless. She had never before seen the Doctor so singular-minded, so determined, or so dismissive of her feelings, her pleas. This was rubbish – hadn't he said that after he'd destroyed the Rachnoss, someone had helped him see that he needed someone in his life to stop him being a violent mess? That person was Martha, clearly, so why would he bother to keep her around, if he wasn't going to listen to her at a time when it really counted? She knew that something else had got into him now, something emotional, residual from their conversation, from his past, from the cathartic experience they should have had. Just before they _almost_ fell into each other, he'd told her there was still much left to say. What was he still hiding, and why or how had it turned him into a maniac with a sledgehammer?

The Doctor approached the little building, and Martha came up behind him. Velvet ropes cordoned off a cement area and twisted and turned so that tourists would wait in an orderly queue to see the shrine. She admired the shrine itself, a life-sized Buddha statue set in bronze with set of three fruit-bowl sized ceremonial bells in front. None of the candles were lit, as the tourists had retreated indoors along with everyone else when Mad Red took the city, and the place felt empty. Empty, but clearly holy. The location was perfect – nature was at peace here, the birds could be heard, a nearby brook, and the whole of Lhasa spread out before the shrine.

And as for the unraveling Time Lord, Martha had not given up. "Doctor, stop. I'm begging you."

"I can't, Martha."

"Yes, you can."

He took three steps toward the shrine and pulled the sledgehammer over his head.

"No!" she cried, running after him. "No!"

His breathing was hard and ragged as he wound up to destroy this symbol, this mark of holy union of the Tibetan people, this great and noble religious site that had survived even through conquest and the reign of communist China.

And at the last second, Martha screamed and threw herself in front of the Doctor, right across the pedastal that held the ceremonial bells in place, right into the path of the sledgehammer.


	14. Chapter 14

FOURTEEN

His voice rang out over the Tibetan mountains as he screamed her name and brought down the sledgehammer. Martha's high cry mixed with it, and if anyone had been listening, the hair on their neck would have stood on end. And then they would have heard the loud clang of metal crashing against itself, against pavement, the dull thudding of wood as a large panel hit the concrete and the wooden supports underneath fell to the sides. It was a great cacophany of voices and bells and violence.

At the very last second, as the velocity of the heavy hammer became too great to stop, he had heaved hard with his left arm, screaming Martha's name. So as not to injure her, he'd been pulled to the left, off his feet, but the sledgehammer had still managed to take out the wooden pedastal and make a great racket. The platform had given way underneath Martha's body, and now they both lay on the ground.

There was silence as the Doctor assessed the situation and got to his feet.

And then, he yelled, "Martha, what the hell are you doing?"

She lay on the ground on her side, sobbing.

"Are you out of your fucking mind?" he screamed. "I could have killed you! I nearly did! What were you thinking?"

She sat up suddenly. "I was trying to save you!" she screamed back, the sobs not having slowed. She was sitting on one hip, holding herself up with her arms. She gingerly tried to prop herself up because she had fallen on that hip and it was painful. But it was all she could do to keep herself upright, as the tears came like showers and her voice and breath quavered.

"What?" he asked.

"You were headed somewhere, Doctor," she insisted through the tears. "I don't know where, but it was somewhere dark. You wouldn't tell me why, you wouldn't listen to reason, and we both know I can't physically prevent you from doing anything. So where does that leave me, eh? How am I supposed to be effectual?"

He dropped the infernal weapon in the mountain dirt with a loud thump. "So the answer is step into the path of a falling sledgehammer?"

"You said you need someone to stop you," she said. "Your friend Donna said it. When you start to go overboard, someone has to pull you back from the brink. And this, Doctor, this was overboard."

"You don't understand."

"Well, clearly!" she exclaimed with a bit of angry sarcasm. She stood up slowly. He did not try to help her. "Doctor, look at this temple. It's five hundred years old. That's not as old as you, but it's old by mankind's standards. And it's the symbol of everything these people believe in. It's the spirit that the Chinese couldn't crush. It's practically encoded in their DNA, at this point, and you were going to destroy it. It would have crushed these people, made them feel like a part of themselves had been taken away."

"Yes," he said. "I was."

"But why?" she asked desperately, her palms turned up, hands clawing at the air. "Why would you do that, Doctor? You know you'd hate yourself later."

"Because, Martha," he snapped at her. "I'm trying to save this planet. _Your planet_, in fact, and sometimes sacrifices have to be made."

"You're talking in circles," she told him. She stood in front of him with her hands on her hips. "You're being cryptic and evasive and you're not making sense. There is something you're not telling me."

"What does it matter?" he asked. "This isn't going to work now anyway. I can't do it – it's ruined." He stepped past her and started heading back down the mountain.

She followed him. "It matters because we are a team, Doctor," she insisted. "I am your partner, aren't I? If you're going to go dark and do something regrettable, I at least deserve to know why."

He was ignoring her again and walking ahead. They descended the stone stairs between the giant rock and the side of the mountain. Martha treaded carefully, as the steps where incredibly narrow and the Doctor waited at the bottom for her, though he refused to look up at her. When she reached the bottom, he kept on moving, leaving her behind.

"So that's it, then? You only let me in when it's convenient for you? When you want to purge your spirit or whatever, you spill your guts. But when you feel like keeping secrets, you hide behind the code of you-wouldn't-understand-the-lot-of-a-Time-Lord."

He rounded on her. "That is not fair." And then he kept going.

"No, it's not," she agreed. "It's bloody rubbish, is what it is. You give an inch so that I think I've got all of you, but it turns out you're keeping bigger secrets so that when it really, really counts, you can't let me in! Or won't."

"Stop being so dramatic."

"I'm not being dramatic, Doctor," she said, beginning to slow down. "I'm just... seeing the big picture."

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" They crossed the foot path, and at that point, the woods became much thicker, and the air as well.

"It means..." she began. She was moving slowly now, her steps became sluggish as her mind came winding down as well. "It means I see where I stand now."

"Don't be ridiculous," he hissed.

"No, I mean it," she said. She stopped walking altogether, and stared at the ground in deep thought.

He turned and looked at her for the first time since they'd begun hiking down.

"Sure, you've spent the last two days telling your story of the Time War, how you lost Thisa, how you had to end the war by destroying your home planet," she said. "But that's all just history. When it's now, when you're in the moment, you don't really want anyone helping you. There's nothing a human can do for a Time Lord anyway, except help pass the time, keep you from getting bored."

"Martha, you're just upset," he said, now actually walking toward her. "You know that what you're saying isn't true."

"Then why won't you tell me why you were going to destroy that temple?"

"I'm not ready yet," he told her.

"I'm your partner, your lover and your friend. You travel with me, you sleep with me, you confide in me. We do, almost literally, _everything _together. The time of _I'm not ready_, in this case, may have passed. If you're going to involve me, if you're going to put my life in danger, if you're going to do something completely daft and cause my head to explode from the sheer stupidity of it, then I deserve to know why."

He just stared at her, boring holes through her with his eyes. She had no idea if he was about to tell her to bugger off or whether he was going to spill the mother of all dark secrets now. He stayed silent for so long that Martha gave up.

"Fine," she said, resigned. "Then take me home."

"What?"

"Take me home. I'll help you figure out what to do about Mad Red, but when we've finished, I want to go back to London. I'll go back to Royal Hope, finish school and get on with my life."

His voice broke, just a bit, when he said, "You don't mean that."

"If I can't trust you, then I'd rather just be done with this."

This seemed to hurt him. "What do you mean, can't trust me?"

"Am I your companion, or just a hitch-hiker? Are you going to confide in me or not? Because keeping secrets almost got me killed. And because you can't have both, you just can't. I can't live that way."

"Martha," he whispered. "You want to leave me?"

"I don't want to," she sobbed. "I think I may have to."

"I can't... you can't... I don't understand."

"I am one hundred per cent invested in you. I love you more than I have ever, or could ever, love anything in this life. There is _nothing_, Doctor, _nothing_ I wouldn't give you, share with you, do for you. In the last two days, I have become convinced that you felt the same way about me."

"I do," he told her, his eyes heavy with sorrow, guilt, longing.

"Clearly, you don't," she answered. "I'm asking you for something now, and you're refusing it without explanation. An hour ago, I thought I had one hundred per cent of you the way you have one hundred per cent of me. And now that I know that I don't, I can't go back. So let's work out this Vitiatum problem, and then you can take me home."

Without a word, the Doctor turned and finished his hike down to the stolen motorbike. This time, she rode down the mountain, shielding her face from the wind for fear that her tears would turn to ice.

* * *

After returning the motorbike to the alley where they'd found it, they retraced their steps and found themselves back at the end of the long run of shops in the city of Lhasa where they'd begun. For perhaps the first time, the sight of the blue Police Box was not a comforting one. She wasn't sure if he was planning on cutting his losses and being rid of her now, or whether he'd come up with some other, less insane, way of throwing off the balance of the five elements. Come to think of it, she still didn't know what the fifth element was.

And she might have asked, except she couldn't stop crying. She walked a couple of paces behind him, now unwilling to let him see her this way. He wasn't the one who would comfort her anymore, so she kept out of his sight.

He unlocked the door of the TARDIS and let them both inside. Martha made a mental note that she needed to give back her key before she left. She choked on the thought – the business of breaking up had always been ugly, but this was one home she never thought she'd have to move out of. As she trudged up the ramp, she pictured herself in the Doctor's bedroom, packing her things, numb from crying, looking ahead at returning to medical school to have a normal life... the thought made her dizzy and sick. She tried to pull away from dwelling there, and definitely dared not think on the moment when she would say goodbye and walk away for the last time. She forced herself to think of anything else... song lyrics, her five favourite films, the ten people she would invite to dinner if she could.

The Doctor was hovering around the console. She looked up and found him shedding his coat and laying it gently on the navigator's chair. With some difficulty, she allowed him to make eye contact, and she stared back at him expressionlessly, her face stained with tears and her eyes bloodshot. She still couldn't stop the rain – the hyperventilating sobs had stopped, but the tightening in her chest just wouldn't go away. She was crushed by what had happened, the decision she'd made, the look on his face as she'd made it.

"Well," she said. "Shall we get on with it, then?"

"Mm," he answered. "Follow me."


	15. Chapter 15

FIFTEEN

It was a kind of parlour which looked like it had been decorated in the 18th century. He had asked her to wait here, so she was waiting. It was a room she had never seen before, and she looked about with curiosity. There was a piano, lots of books, a chess set, a Mah-Jong set, a shuffleboard table, and of course, antique furniture galore. The sofa where she sat was covered with a high-quality red velvet, and the end tables were hand-carved with matching lion's feet, set in cherry wood and finished with authentic high-gloss stain of the era.

The room was a mystery to her, existing as it did in this super-futuristic science-fiction ship. She wondered, and not for the first time, how many rooms there were in the place. She had seen plenty of them, but began reflecting sadly that she would never, ever see all of them, and that this may, indeed, be her last day aboard the TARDIS. Again, she realised that the tears were still coming, the sadness was still leaking out of her, and it might be quite a long while before that would stop. Months, she predicted. This wouldn't be like getting over some old wanker boyfriend that could be glossed over with a hen party or two. This would require half a year's meditation and perhaps a retreat.

She briefly toyed with the idea of staying here in Lhasa for a few months after the Doctor moved on.

Within five minutes, the Doctor returned with two mugs. He handed one to her, kept one for himself, and sat down beside her.

"Thank you," she said, taking it. She sniffed it, and it had an unfamiliar aroma. "What is it?"

"Chamomile," he answered. "And a little draught of something leftover from one of my many adventures."

She looked at him as if to say, _are you really going to make me ask?_

He read her thought, and said, "It's called Lacrysorta. It's meant to make you stop crying. I wasn't sure you'd be able to do that on your own."

She stared into the cup. The liquid was yellow, but that was fairly typical of chamomile. She tasted it and liked the sweetness, and the hint of eucalyptus-like flavour that the draught seemed to add. Immediately, she felt the tightening in her chest give way, her breathing equalise and her body simply relax. As she finished the cup, sitting in silence with the Doctor, she realised that though she still felt sadness, she no longer felt the urge to cry. This was good news – she had hated having that out of her control.

She leaned forward and put the mug on the table. "How do you feel?" the Doctor asked her.

"I've been better," she answered evenly. "But I feel in-control now."

"Good. Then I feel perfectly comfortable saying this to you," he said, moving closer to her. He took her cheeks in his hands and looked her straight in the eyes, marvelling, once again, at how stunning she was. "I have absolutely no intention of taking you home. Not ever. You are not walking away from me now or any day, and I am never walking away from you. If we get separated, it means that one of us has died, have you got that?"

"Doctor..." she began.

"No, stop right there," he said, taking his hands away. "Whatever you're going to say, save it. I will do _anything_, Martha. Literally, anything to make you want to stay. I love you. That's all there is to it. I love you, and I refuse to let this happen. So we're going to work this thing out."

"What about the Vitiatum?"

"Screw the Vitiatum," he said, taking her hands. "If you and I can't function, then the world is in a whole mess of trouble anyway. I don't care if the entire human race turns red while we're in here – we are going to stay in this room until I have earned your trust again."

"Really?"

"Really," he insisted. "If you need me to tell you what motivated me to try and destroy that temple, then I'll tell you. If you need me to tell you the entire story behind it, and why I traipsed up there like a maniac, then I'll tell you. If you need me to fly to the edge of existence itself to pluck an orchid for your hair... then I'll pluck."

"I'm not sure what to say."

"You don't need to say anything. Just know that when you told me you wanted to leave me, I almost passed out. I am weak and empty when I think of being without you."

"But you didn't say a word the entire way down. I thought..."

"I was choking. I couldn't speak, so I didn't try. I'm sorry if I scared you."

And now it was her turn. She opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out. Instead, as usual, he filled the silence.

"And while we're on the subject, there's something I want to show you."

He leaned over to his left and dug into a drawer. When he turned back, he had a black disc in his hand, the size and thickness of a hockey puck. He set it on the coffee table beside Martha's mug.

He stopped for a moment. "I believe that what's causing the epidemic in Lhasa is filial-parental ties, the bonds of love that exist between parents and children."

"Parent-child bonds, that's the fifth element?" she asked.

"I believe so, yes," he answered. "I'm not certain, but all the evidence points that way."

Martha was sitting up very straight, and her eyes wandered to the cherry-wood wainscoting around the top of the room as she thought about it. Her body slumped as the revelation became clear. "Of course!" she said. "Those monks and their parents got sick only when they saw each other! That's why you told Lobsang Samten to keep families away from the monasteries!"

"Yeah," he said quietly. "And there's something else."

"There is?"

He nodded. "It's to do with the Rachnoss." He gulped, hard. Martha took his hand and felt him tremble.

"When the Rachnoss were destroyed at the center of the Earth," he said, voice quavering like the rest of him. He looked her dead in the eye. "When I killed them..."

He leaned forward and buried his head in his hands. His fingers seemed to tug at his hair hard enough to pull it all out by the roots. His breathing bordered on hyperventilation. Martha felt suddenly very silly for _demanding_ to know everything, and telling him it wasn't good enough to say he wasn't ready. He was showing her right now, clearly, that he wasn't ready. How could she ever hope or claim to understand?

"Doctor, stop, just stop," she said, trying to pry his hands away from his head. "I'll stay with you until the end of the universe if you want. You don't have to do this."

"When I killed them," he said suddenly, looking at her again, tears in his eyes. "The thing that... well, the memory that stands out most from that day was the Empress of the Rachnoss, in all her evil, evil glory, _screaming_ for her children." His teeth were clenched, and clearly it was an effort to stay under control.

"Oh God," she whispered.

"The incubating Rachnoss at the centre of the Earth were hatching from eggs she had laid. She was a mother. She wanted to populate the Earth with giant spiders that would have taken out the human race, and she used two innocent human beings to do it, but in the end, she was just a mother. All she wanted was a better life for her children. She was doing what all mothers do – and once I had that in my mind, realised it's a huge part of who the Rachnoss are."

"But Doctor, you said yourself, she wanted to destroy the human race."

"I could have just sealed off the pit. I could have used a transmat beam from the TARDIS to take them away."

"Wouldn't that have drained the TARDIS' energy?"

"Yes, but she would have gotten over it, given enough time. Instead, I drowned them, all of her children. And I drained the Thames to do it. And she screamed and screamed for them... and I didn't care," he said, breaking down again. "I just didn't care. I thought it was good and right, and that she deserved it, the eight-legged bitch."

He leaned over and wept a bit into Martha's shoulder. She knew that without the draught he had given her, there would be no way she could withstand this. But she was strong now. She was gutted, but strong.

"But then the time came," he said, pulling himself under control. "When I couldn't get that voice out of my head. I began to dream about it, have nightmares about it. The screaming of the Empress, the visceral cry of a parent for her children..."

"Like Jessica Pelham's mum, back in Vail."

He nodded. "But, it wasn't until we got here to Lhasa that I knew. I put it together all at once," he said. "The Rachnoss, the fifth element, the monks and their mum and dad. It all fits – filial bonds."

"And if you can distract the people from that for a bit, and instead inspire hatred..." she thought aloud.

"Then you can throw off the influence of the fifth element, unbalance all of the elements and release the hold of the Vitiatum on the world," he finished for her.

"And to do that..." she continued thinking aloud. "What better way than to destroy a temple?"

"As you said," the Doctor told her. "To destroy the symbol of their very strength at a time like this? It would have wrought a havoc of the best sort."

"I'm sorry I wouldn't let you," she whispered. "I feel very silly now."

"Don't," he said. "I know why you wouldn't let me."

"Still."

They were silent for a few moments, and they held hands. The Doctor looked around the room and sighed. "I haven't been in this room... in I don't know how long. Since before the Time War."

She looked around, as he had. "It's beautiful. It doesn't feel like it belongs in the TARDIS."

He smiled. "It used to bustle with life," he said. "We'd play the piano, play games, Thisa would beat me at shuffleboard..." He pushed an invisible button on the little hockey puck thing that sat on the table. The image of a young man came alive as a hologram radiating from the centre of the disc.

"Who's that?" asked Martha.

"That's me," he said. "So, so long ago."

"That looks nothing like you!" she exclaimed, knowing full well, even then, that it was a daft thing to say to a man who had changed his face God knew how many times.

"Yeah, well," he shrugged. "I hadn't regenerated yet. That was me, still in my very first life. Before I'd even left the planet or learned how to fly a TARDIS. Actually, come to think of it, I never did officially learn..."

"What happened in that life that caused you to die?"

"Time," he told her. "I actually died of old age that first time, innit brilliant? That face got older and older, that body wore out and I died. When I came back, I was shorter, grumpier, a little less brave. From there – oh, the stories I could tell."

"How many times?"

"How many times what?"

"How many times have you regenerated?"

He thought about it, and seemed to be tallying on his fingers. "Nine," he said. "Nine times. This is my tenth face, tenth body."

"Oh my God!" she cried, smiling. "Is this one your favourite?"

He smiled. "Well, no. I had the most fun in my fourth face, but that's neither here nor there."

Martha was laughing, and the Doctor leaned forward and pushed the button again. Another young man's face appeared in the holographic field.

"Is that you as well?" she asked.

"No. That's Mel. His real name was Melgios." He did not explain. He simply advanced the picture to yet another young man. "And this is his brother. He was good with Mah-Jong," he said, gesturing to the Mah-Jong set. "He used to play with Thisa – she was their sister. She'd get so upset when he'd win – she was so competitive."

Martha watched his face. The crinkles at the corner of his eyes lit up his face as he smiled at these images. The rest of his face was resigned, forlorn. He pushed the button again.

"This is Thisa," he said. "With her first face, of course. She regenerated four times after that. I remember when I came back to Gallifrey for the first time after leaving. I didn't recognise her."

Now it was Martha's turn to smile. She and Rose had briefly discussed how weird it is to be close to someone who changes their appearance completely, and how difficult it can be to warm up to the new personality. She commented, "I guess it must be difficult, if you're a Time Lord, to know who your friends are."

"Can be," he agreed. "But as soon as I saw her in action, I knew who she was."

"You said she was exceptional," Martha said. "Talented like her father. Her father was someone important?"

The Doctor looked at her with such deep sorrow, such an aching that it almost didn't matter that she'd had the anti-crying draught. She had no idea what was coming, what a bomb was about to come out of his mouth, and yet, the look in his eyes nearly brought her to her knees.

Finally, he opened his mouth and spoke. "Her father was me."

Martha thought the air had been sucked out of the room. She gasped, taking in little bits of air slowly, her body unconsciously retreating from him.

"That's how I know she didn't die with her family, Martha," he explained. "I was it. By then, everyone else was gone except for me and her."

She stood up, unable to sit through the tension. She needed to process. She paced, as she had seen him do a million times. Murder, mayhem, heartbreak, guilt, explosions, escapes, Daleks, Time Lords, grief and misery... these were all things that she had accepted lie in the Doctor's past. Chases, running, brilliance, friendship, love, sex, beauty, compassion, bravery, self-sacrifice, right versus wrong, truth versus lies... these were all the things that she felt, in her bones, embodied the Doctor's present.

Nowhere in any of these scenarios had she considered that the word _fatherhood_ might play in the mix. Even for her own life. It had never occurred to her (at least not yet) to think that he could or would become the father of _her _child – it just didn't fit with her conception of who he was. He was a madman, an adventurer, as he had called himself. Ancient and forever, burning at the centre of time and space. But a father? Doing all the things that fathers do? Including, now, grieving for his children.

She imagined this room, as he'd said, alive with activity. She tried to imagine the young Time Lord as she had seen him in the hologram, only slightly older. The piano playing, kids getting competitive over Mah-Jong, the Doctor with a different face running interference, encouraging them, fostering their talents and letting them win at shuffleboard. She assumed there had to have been a mother as well, someone who shared this responsibility with him, shared these joys and heartbreaks, and together they'd fret over the children and put them to bed, and take them swimming and applaud their successes... But the Doctor as a married man did not blow her mind nearly as far out as the Doctor as a father. Someone called him Dad. Three someones, at least.

And now she understood. She understood why losing Thisa had been such a difficult story to tell, why letting her go weighed so heavily on him. She understood why the Mad Red plague spreading in Lhasa was such a painful thing for him to think about, and why destroying the Empress' children was such a guilty, horrible memory. She understood the weight of what caused him to stalk up that mountain with such an aggravated single-mindedness and why he hadn't been ready to say.

And she felt like a complete arse right now. She felt like a spoiled child, a clingy girlfriend. What had she done, forcing his hand like this? These are secrets best kept until the time is right, not until the keeper is given a flimsy ultimatum. She wondered now if she'd even really meant it when she'd said she'd leave him.

"Martha, are you all right?" he asked, after she had paced for over five minutes and hadn't said a word.

She turned and looked at him. Having been lost in that fevered dream, she was almost surprised to see him, how he looked now. With disbelief, she looked him up and down and took in everything that he was. She knew that nine hudred years of time and space oscillated in his brain, the turn of the universe, the breathing of the stars and planets, ten different faces, dozens of travelling companions, thousands of adventures.

But as he stood now, he looked no more than thirty-five years old. He was tall, slim, with unruly hair and sideburns, and so handsome it almost took her breath away. His eyes were brown, deep and soulful, and he had an adorable smattering of freckles across his nose and cheeks which were sometimes adorned with a pair of black-rimmed spectacles. He almost always wore a brown and blue pin-striped suit and Chuck Taylor trainers, and sometimes, he had a tan trenchcoat that he wore over it. His features were angular, his nose slightly askew, and his mouth, when it moved, made her weak with lust.

And his demeanour matched his look. He was manic and brilliant, but youthful in his movements and sensibilities. He surrounded himself with good-looking women, probably not by accident. He reacted to bad news with a young man's fervent anger, and reacted to good news with a childish smile that could light up galaxies. When he ran, it was at full-throttle. When he screamed, it was full-throated. When he was aroused, his body responded the way a young man's would, and when he made love, it was with full youthful conviction and passion.

He stood there, waiting for an answer. The Doctor, the tenth Doctor, the one she knew, loved and followed. He was there, and he brought her crashing back to the here and now. Deceptively old, inexplicably new.

She smiled. "I'm fine. And so are you."

She walked toward him and fell into his arms. He lifted her off her feet as their mouths found each other, and pressed against him, she felt the warmth, the fullness, the youthfulness of his body. His tongue probed her mouth as both of them lost all control and the tears fell with abandon.

He set her on her feet and moved his mouth to the side and down her cheek and neck. As his breathing came in short, desperate spurts, he begged, "Please don't leave me."

"Never," she promised.


	16. Chapter 16

SIXTEEN

God, she had almost walked away from this, this fantastic feeling of being loved and needed and wanted by someone whom she loved and needed and wanted in return. The euphoria of being at the centre of the life of a man who had seen so much, done so much, lost so much. She felt powerful again, like the universe turned around her. That was the magic of being with the Doctor, over and above their explosive, lustful tumbling: feeling valued by a Time Lord.

And in just a few senseless, hungry moments, everything came to a head. Normally, when they grabbed onto each other, all other things left the room until they were quite burnt out. But today it was different. Today, they had been tested. Today, they had been on a roller coaster. Today, circumstances had forced the Doctor to think of his children and talk about them, and he had been laid bare to feel the pain of it completely. Today, they had tried to consummate their love twice and had both times been thwarted. And now, all of that was in the room with them, and it was driving them together, as though they were filling the last open space in the room. Their mouths searched each other, their hands wandered, their brains were full, their bodies burned.

He tugged at her shirttail and ran his hands up and down her back, alternating between kissing her lips and her neck. He couldn't decide if he wanted her mouth more, or the rest of her. She stood, clinging round his neck, obliging whatever he did, feeling acutely the great surge of love that he was expressing.

But a little voice inside, one that, ironically, the Doctor had planted within her, told her to wait.

"Doctor," she whispered. "We still haven't solved the problem..." She was cut off by his lips covering hers and his tongue thrusting into her mouth. She didn't mind, of course, and sucked at it as voraciously as it had pushed its way in. The sensation of it caused her to moan, and this, in turn, caused him to push. He put more pressure on her mouth and body, and compensated by holding her tighter. She felt that quick youthful hardness pushing out from under his belt, and suddenly, she wanted to climb him.

She jumped up and wrapped her legs around his waist and he caught her. She pulled back and looked at his face, overtaken. With his eyes, he told her he wanted her. With his lips and voice, he said, "Sod it." Then he kissed her hard. "I told you before, the Earth can turn red for all I care – you and I are going to solve our own problems for once."

His feet moved them both in the direction of the the wall behind her. In glancing about the room mere minutes earlier, she had catalogued some of its features. This told her that he was pushing her toward the chess table. In moments, she found that her bottom was knocking the white and black player pieces onto the mahogany stools en route to the floor, and she was sitting atop a higher-than-normal table of black and grey checked marble, supported on black iron legs. She supposed it must have been a lovely piece of furniture – perhaps she would examine it later, maybe even engage the good Doctor in a game of chess. But for now, she simply hoped it was good and sturdy.

The Doctor shed his jacket, and as he dove back into the crook of her neck, as though he felt it would atrophy from lack of kisses, she smiled at seeing yet another pinstriped piece of suit crumpled unceremoniously on the floor. And in his ravenous meanderings about her neck and shoulders, his hands grasped her hips and bottom and thighs. They moved up and down her back and sides and arms and shoulders, and when he finally landed back at her parted lips, vented for the panting she was doing now, his fingers attacked the button of her jeans. They were snug and his hands seemed three times larger than normal because he was shaking with desire at this stage, so it took a moment to unbutton them. But once he had, Martha quickly took the cue to lift herself momentarily off the table on her hands. He pulled them down her legs and they dropped to the floor.

He stood between her parted knees and reached out. His knuckles grazed ever so lightly at the cleft between her legs, against her damp knickers. She closed her eyes and put her weight back on her hands behind her, letting herself be taken by this tiny gesture. She could feel him touching her very slightly, but it electrified her body even further, caused her muscles to tighten and her qualms to loosen.

"How do you feel?" he asked her, his voice low and gravelly with his own choked drive.

She felt guilty for neglecting the world so that they could have a reunion shag, no matter how long it had been. She was mad with fear for her home world about to be overtaken by Vitiatum. She was reeling from the Doctor's many revelations – the Time War, Gallifrey, his children. She was depressed and embarrassed by her own stupidity and immaturity, and frankly, she was a little cold. But with all this, she was also aware that she wanted him unbelievably. Lust had pretty well fogged over all of her other senses. She was fighting to hold back from pushing her hips forward against his hand, because she was slick with the desire of two whole days of running, crying, worrying and _almost_ having relief.

In all of these emtions, she chose, "Urgent," muttered through parted lips and from behind closed eyes. This pretty much summed up all of it.

"Urgent," he repeated, pushing her knickers aside. He slipped two fingers into her, and she inhaled sharply and noisily. He moved his hand lazily back and forth, watching the pleasure and pressure build on her face as his fingers slid in and out.

Her eyes flew open suddenly. "Yes," she whispered, grasping his eyes with her own. "Don't you feel it?"

He did. He felt it, if possible, more acutely than she did. "Oh yes," he lilted. "I feel it."

She was supporting her weight on her hands, and using the leverage now to rock back and forth on his fingers, helping the process along. Her jaw was set in an expression that might have otherwise betrayed anger, but the Doctor knew that today, it denoted the _urgency_ she had mentioned. "Then just take me. Do it now." She was barely forming words. The breaths she was omitting loosely resembled English, but only just.

He smiled. "Okay," he said softly. With these words, he pushed his thumb up against her. He moved it side-to-side along her clitoris, and any thoughts she had were now officially mush. Her eyes closed tightly suddenly, and her head flew back again. Just a few strokes, a few seconds, and he felt her inner muscles tightening, and then throbbing around his fingers as her panting became full moans. She seemed to climax for days. Her body throbbed, her moans echoed about the room, she flushed and convulsed, her elbows nearly gave way and her ankles locked against the Doctor's bum.

Coming down, when she finally opened her eyes, he was staring back at her with intensity. He slowly let his fingers slip from her, and she felt like whimpering at the loss. He reached for his own waistband and then unzipped, freeing himself from the confines of an uncomfortable pair of trousers. Not that he was ever particularly lax in this department, but he was rock-hard just now, and just the exposure of his member to the open air was causing his breath to quicken and shorten. He and Martha both looked down at the space in-between them, the three or four inches that separated his body from hers. It felt like an expanse of miles, and no wonder. Circumstances of the past forty-eight hours had kept them consistently from this moment, and before now, it seemed as though they may as well exist in separate dimensions for all the comfort it was bringing them.

At last, their eyes met, Martha's weight still supported on her hands, the Doctor's palms now cupping her bum. They held their breaths, watching each other with wonder and rush. She was the one to speak, and to break whatever resolve he had. She uttered the single word, "Now," with transparent abandon, and on her cue, he thrust forward. With a grunt, he was buried in her body, up to the hilt. It was a moment so long-waited for, so well-deserved, so bloody cathartic, that they almost didn't know what to do next. Almost.

But once the thrusting began, they found it like riding a bike, only quite noisy. The wrought-iron legs of the chess table swayed, and the heavy marble now thumped heavily and repeatedly against the carefully finished wooden wall, causing not only chipped paint but considerable noise. Their voices came out in a mad grunting chorus with the thumping, loud and almost panicked, both shifting their gaze from the ceiling to each other to the backs of their own eyelids. That old urgency had them constantly on the edge with their bodies trembling in total crisis. Soon, Martha found herself on the edge once more, ready to explode with the weight the Doctor's body pushing into and against her. Her face contorted into the stance of pain and ectasy, and she demanded, "Don't stop!" He obeyed, grunting harder, and saw her over the edge as she raised her voice and convulsed for the second time. Her voice hung high in the air again, and then came down to rest as the flush spread through her body.

Fevered, she lay down on the table, her head barely two inches from the edge. He didn't stop driving into her for one moment, and she didn't ask him to. He draped her knees over his arms as he continued to pound, to damage the wall, to make Martha pant insanely as his member shoved against places inside her that made her mad with pleasure and practically caused her eyes to roll back in her head. His grunting never ceased, and in fact came through gritted teeth now. Occasionally, he opened his mouth into the shape of an "o," let a moan of pleasure escape, and then he wrinkled his nose and gritted his teeth once more. Once again, she felt her body climbing to a place of explosion, and within a minute, she found herself cresting once more with shallow, desperate cries matching the Doctor's rhythm. Once again, he continued thrusting as thought he didn't notice, with full noise, full desperation. Martha climaxed for a fourth time, lying on the marble chess table, this time she was silent with the intensity of it.

As she recovered, she sat up and gazed at the Doctor, wound tightly with sweat dripping down his forehead. He actually stopped moving and waited for her to say something. In lieu of that, she looked at the velvet sofa where they had been sitting, and then looked back at him. He took the hint and without separating from her, walked them both over to the sofa and collapsed upon it.

Martha moved gently on him, loosening his tie for what felt like the eightieth time in the last forty-eight hours, and unbuttoned part of his blue shirt. She leaned forward against his shoulders and thrust her tongue into his mouth. He pushed against her tongue with his, continually opening his mouth further, trying, it seemed to devour her. This inflamed her further and she began to push harder against him, to move up and down on his length like a pump.

He stared up at her and said breathlessly, "You're brilliant. And you're powerful and beautiful."

"You're brilliant," she reciprocated, grasping his head. "And you make me come over and over..."

"That's just you," he insisted. "I can't stop myself."

He sat up straight. Martha wrapped her arms tightly around his head and shoulders and stared into his eyes. "Me neither."

They ground against each other with an impending crisis. The groaning was back in full glory, and all available limbs were involved in wrapping about each other. When Martha stared at the Doctor's face, he stared back, but it seemed as though he might literally explode at any moment, as though all of his blood was rushing to his head. She whispered in his ear with a sharp intensity, "Just let go. Just come, it's okay. I love you – come for me."

An indescribable sound left his lips, and then he replied shakily, "Oh... I love you." With that, his body gave way, and Martha felt him convulse beneath her, and fill her with everything he had at that moment. He brought her with him, and she climaxed once again herself, their groans mixing anew like a chorus.

She leaned forward and collapsed against his shoulder, gasping for breath, as was he. After about ten seconds, he said, "Martha?"

"Mmm?"

He seemed to push against her a bit with his arms. "Martha?"

She didn't notice the tone, that a new kind of urgency had come into his voice. "What?"

"Look at me."

Slowly, she pushed herself up and looked at the Doctor's face. The ready-to-explode colouring had not gone.

"Something's wrong, isn't it?" he asked.

"You're just a bit wound up," she said. But as soon as it was out of her mouth, she saw it in his eyes. The soft brown had turned much darker. She grasped his head tighter and forced it back so she could examine him. In slightly more light, she saw the dark spots were spreading slowly but steadily. His eyes were turning black. She released him and sat back, looking at him worriedly.

"Is it what I think it is?" he asked, his voice lower than normal.

She nodded.


	17. Chapter 17

SEVENTEEN

The Doctor was uncharacteristically silent as he leaned on Martha and let himself be dragged down the corridor. He was trying to help her as much as he could by attempting to walk on his own, but he was losing control. He could feel himself being taken over by the Vitiatum – he could feel the sense of power, euphoria, hunger, rage. If he lost himself in the next few minutes, Martha would be in danger, or at the very least, helpless. She was nowhere near strong enough to restrain him if he didn't want to be restrained, nor to drag him across an infinite space if he went to dead weight. This would be the disadvantage to having female companions. Where was Captain Jack when one needed him?

"Where are we going?" he asked at last. He actually had no idea what she was doing. When she had seen the blackness in his eyes and realised he'd been taken by the Vitiatum, she had pulled herself away from him, got back into her clothes in short order, helped him get back into his, and then began tugging him out the door. He'd gone with her unquestioningly because he was beginning to feel a bit woozy, and guessed that it was the calm before the storm. Any excitement now, any anger or nervousness and he might push himself over the edge.

"To the bedroom," she answered. "You're going to stay in there until this thing passes."

"Martha, it's not just going to pass," he said. "We've talked about this. The Rachnoss likely brought enough for a few billion years."

"Well, I can't have you running about the TARDIS," she insisted. "Where's the sonic?"

"Breast pocket. Left side."

They stopped for a moment while she reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and extracted the sonic screwdriver.

"Which setting will deadbolt the door?"

"Eight fifteen."

"And unlock it?"

"Five eighteen."

As Martha looked away for a second to shove the sonic in her pocket, the Doctor felt a surge of some kind and screamed out with brittle force. It was a Vitiatum-laced cry, with a tinge of restraint. All the same, it caused his body to lurch sideways, and it drove Martha into the wall. For a moment, she was trapped between it and the weight of the Doctor's body. She pushed hard with both arms, and for a moment, he regained his faculties enough to pull himself away. When Martha looked at him, he saw fear in her eyes. He surmised that his face must be in the second stage of redness. Indeed, he could feel heat rising inside.

He spied a door in one of the more frequented hallways. He tugged at Martha and headed in that direction.

"What are you doing? The bedroom's this way!"

"In there," he barked. "Cuffs!"

She let go of him reluctantly and went through the door he'd indicated. The room was a bit like she imagined a Time Lord's garden shed might look. Broken clocks, random electronic objects, tools and parts that were totally alien to her. There were different types of rope, shovels, chains and weapons, even a few books on how to care for plants, how to fix a 1950's radio, how to get a Skraglark into a Huffblatt...

And hanging on the wall, she saw them: two sets of standard-issue handcuffs, the kind detectives carry, and the key hanging nearby. She chuckled to herself. _At least he doesn't keep them in the night stand._

She went back to the corridor and found the Doctor down on all-fours, heaving as though he might be sick. He was making a god-awful racket with his voice and breath, trying to leverage himself to fight against the drug. He called her name desperately.

"I'm here, I'm here," she said. She got down with him and shoved her shoulder under his arm. "Up you come. Just a few more steps."

He pushed against the wall to stand up, and then, even dodgier than before, he let her lead him to the bedroom. He flopped down on the bed and looked up at her, the wave of madness having subsided temporarily.

"Cuff me to the bed, Martha," he demanded. "I have no idea what I'd do to you if I got taken over completely. Just tie me down – be safe."

"But it might not get you now," she whined, sitting on the edge of the bed. "You seem to be able to fight it off."

"Yeah, but it hurts like hell fighting this hard," he said, putting his hands at his temples. "And it's only a matter of time before it gets stronger than me."

"Well, what are you doing to fight it? Maybe we could spread the word!"

"No," he shook his head. "A human couldn't fight it off – my brain works differently."

Martha knew that meant that his mind was _stronger_ than a human's, but he didn't want to say so.

"Doctor," she whimpered. "I can't do this without you..."

"You have to," he said harshly. "Now, tie me down! And when you leave here, don't think about me!"

She took the cuffs from inside her waistband. "How am I supposed to do that?" she asked, fastening the metal restraints around each of the Doctor's wrists.

"You'll find a way," he said. "Just go out and save the world – do not worry about me."

She fastened the other ends of the cuffs to the wooden beams on the headboard, built into the wall.

"Sonic them," he told her. "Setting three ninety two."

"How do I unfasten?" she asked, sonicking the cuffs.

"You don't need to know, because you won't be unfastening them until I am myself again, yeah?"

She looked at him with something bordering on fear. "Doctor..."

"Martha, don't argue!"

She fell sadly silent, and sat on the edge of the bed with him, turning the sonic over and over in her hands.

"Does setting eight fifteen lock all doors?" she asked after a few minutes, knowing she'd have to strike out on her own in a bit.

"No, just this one," he said. "Ten twenty locks standard Earth doors pretty well. Two eleven opens them."

"Okay," she said, trying to commit that to memory.

"Martha, why did you take me out of the games room?" he asked. "You could have locked the door to that room just as well as this and saved yourself a lot of effort."

"Because," she told him. "You are under the influence now because... well, you said it was filial-parental love. You were thinking about your children... that room had all those memories..."

He smiled. "That's brilliant."

"Thanks."

"You're brilliant, you are."

"Thanks."

"But I don't think it's filial-parental," he told her. "I think it's just love."

"Excuse me?"

"Honestly, Martha, when I was talking about my children, I was only feeling sadness. Crushing, but cathartic, sadness. I wasn't thinking about how much I loved them, only about how I lost them and how empty a feeling it is to have lost a child. And anyway, when we were talking about that, I didn't feel any effects of Vitiatum."

She remained silent, and just listened, fairly certain she knew where he was going with this.

"When I did start to feel the effects, it was at the moment when... let's just say that the overwhelming emotion I was feeling did not stem from fatherhood."

"It was me."

"Yes," he said. "My love for you..." another surge overtook him, and he pulled at his restraints. The otherworldly sounds that escaped from his throat made Martha very glad she had tied him down. She stood up hastily and watched him writhe, and then slowly calm. After a brief respite, the Doctor, now through a mask of terrifying red and black, said, "That's why you can't think about me. Now go. Come back for me later, but don't think... don't be in love!"

Right now, she wanted nothing more than to burst with adrenaline and affection and kiss him all over. But she dared not. She didn't even look at him again, nor say goodbye, she just left the room. She sonicked the door locked, and his words, _don't be in love_ echoed in her head. After a year, being in love with him dominated her life. How was she supposed to forget that? Loving him would be her motivation to find a cure... how could she go out into the world and fight this thing, and separate it from her driving desire to see him cured and back to normal?

And while she was at it, how was she supposed to work out how to stop it without him? She knew nothing of the Rachnoss, she knew nothing of the inner-workings of the TARDIS, which could detect what was going on at the centre of the Earth and whatnot – but what could she do? Stand and telepathically _ask_ the TARDIS very nicely to do things for her?

On the other side of the door, she heard the familiar vicious rant of a fully-fledged Mad Red case. She burst into tears. The Doctor was gone for now, and had been replaced by a feral alien mutant.

_That might, work_ she thought. _Tell yourself the Doctor is gone. Be angry, not in love._

* * *

She went back to her old bedroom and changed into proper walking shoes and dug out a good warm coat. She searched through the long brown trenchcoat draped over the navigator's stool and found the little folder containing the psychic paper. She double checked that the sonic was in her pocket. She tried to think of what else the Doctor might carry with him...

She felt like she had on the first day when she'd moved away from her parents' house. That day, she'd realised that now, she had to set the thermostat herself if she wanted to keep comfortable, open all the shades in the morning if she wanted to let in sunlight. And that wasn't even mentioning paying the bills and making her own meals. She had to be her own parent. Today she realised that in many ways, being with the Doctor was like being a child. She'd just make sure she was dressed, and he'd worry about all the equipment and precautions and problem-solving. Suddenly, he wasn't there, now _she _had to be the Doctor. She willed herself to think like him, act like him. Even if she didn't have his knowledge, at least they were on her own home planet – she could be resourceful if she tried.

But it was daunting, and she sighed. For a while, she stared at the coat, wishing he were here but not allowing herself to feel love. Briefly, she considered wearing the coat, wondering if it would help put her in his mind. She shook off the thought with a bit of a chuckle and walked out the TARDIS door. She locked it behind her, and then stroked it, wistfully aware that she had locked the door twice over to keep the Doctor safe. It was all up to her now.

* * *

Martha wandered once again down the row of shops in the city centre of Lhasa. She was deeply in thought, and did not particularly wish to rush just now. She absently peered into the shop windows and lazily assessed the damage. Mostly, her mind was on the elements.

Throw the elements off-balance. This was her task. Air, earth, fire, water, love. Shouldn't be a big deal – she was good with the sciences.

The Doctor had had the idea to destroy a sacred temple in order to tip the scales in favour of hatred, but she couldn't bring herself to do that. And anyway, she wasn't willing to hike up the mountain on her own. Not yet anyway. She'd re-assess her desperation in a day or so.

"Nitrogen!" she said aloud, stopping in her tracks. Perhaps if she could put off the balance of oxygen to nitrogen in the atmosphere... no, but that was back in Tahiti. She had no idea how to fly the TARDIS back there, and furthermore, no idea how to produce nitrogen out of nowhere. Perhaps the TARDIS had some sort of tanks, reserves someplace, but even if that were the case, she'd never find them.

She kicked a stone down the block, and began walking again.

The Rachnoss had been defeated before by drowning. Their lair at the centre of the Earth had been flooded with water, and they'd been killed. Interesting that creatures who thrive on water should be so easily taken out by it. But then again, humans thrive on water as well, and humans can still drown. Come to think of it, humans thrive on air and earth as well, and in a different way, fire. But an excess of oxygen causes the faculties to loosen, too much earth suffocates and everyone knows a human can burn to death. So she supposed it was no wonder than an inundation of water would take out the Rachnoss. That was a _total_ imbalance of the elements in the confined little world of the Rachnoss.

"Hm," she said to herself, stopping again.

What had actually killed the Rachnoss was an _inundation_ of one of the elements, not an effort toward making one of the elements turn to opposite. The Doctor had tried the latter by turning love to hate. This might not have worked, Martha decided, because turning hatred toward a person who destroyed a temple does not weaken the loving bonds between other people. Blimey, could it be that the Doctor had been wrong? Had _she_ found a flaw in _his _logic?

"Wow," she smiled, heading down a side-street.

Of course, drowning the world was not an option, and anyway, she obviously didn't want to kill anyone. She couldn't produce more oxygen to turn the world loopy without planting a billion trees, and that would take hundreds of years. But wait! She had a time machine! Well, one which she had no idea how to operate, and anyway, that would only help the Doctor, not everyone else. She couldn't set the planet on fire, that was for certain, and she couldn't make it rain dirt.

But perhaps she'd been all wrong-headed about it. Four of the five elements are more or less tangible, made of matter. Love is intangible, and therefore limitless...

An idea was forming. She began running into the old town, following signs toward the larger monasteries.

Yes, it would mean paying a terrible price at first, in order to reap greater benefit later, but the Tibetans would understand. Part of Eastern Philosophy said that deluging oneself in the bad would eventually cause logic itself to turn inside-out, and yield good.

She held onto that hope. It was certainly better than destroying the world as she knew it.


	18. Chapter 18

EIGHTEEN

"Who's there?" a voice asked from inside the monastery.

"My name is Martha Jones," Martha Jones called out. "I'm not infected. I need your help."

A little latch opened, just at eye-level, and a pair of peepers peered out at her. She waved uneasily. "Oh, not from around here are you?"

"Er, no."

"Where are you from?" The voice was calm and curious, not accusing.

"I'm British," she said.

"Really? You don't look British."

"Grandchild of immigrants."

"Ah," said the voice. "I have never been to Britain. I hear it is lovely."

"It can be," she answered. She was growing just a tad impatient and wondered where this line of questioning was going.

"Why are you here?"

"I'm looking for a monk called Lobsang Samten," she said. "I met him earlier today, and I need his help."

"That is a common name, miss," the voice said. "Can you be more specific?"

"Well, he said he was trained in nursing," she said. "He had come down into town to help in any way he could."

"I'm afraid I cannot help you."

"Oh!" she exclaimed, remembering. "He said that the monastery where he lives had four cases of Mad Red; two monks who are brothers, and their parents."

The voice sighed. "I know that one, yes." He opened the door and came outside, apparently trusting Martha not to give him any egregious disease. He pointed up the mountain to a green roof. "That is where you want to go. It's about two miles – all vertical."

Martha sighed heavily. "All right. Thank you."

She strode back up the wide path back to the main road into the city. And then, she took a chapter from the Doctor's book. She found a motorbike chained to a post with a standard gate lock, the kind sometimes used on doors with hook latches. She pressed the sonic to the hard metal, put it on the setting that the Doctor had told her would open most doors, and prayed for a miracle.

She closed her eyes, and then heard a click. The lock snapped open in her hand. She let out a half-laugh, half-cry of delight and relief, and mounted the bike. She tried a few different settings on the sonic to get the engine going, all ones she had used before. Finally, she remembered that setting 54 was the one the Doctor had told her to use to jumpstart the mechanical doors in Lazarus' lab from hell. It worked. The bike roared to life and hummed. She looked down at the controls. She had never done this before, but there was a first time for everything.

She took it slow, and followed one of the mountain roads which had seemed to lead in the direction of the green roof. It was truly a feat of upper-body strength to make a sharp turn without making it too sharp, and making a subtle turn without making it too subtle. She moved at perhaps 25 miles per hour the whole time, but figured she'd rather be slow than dead, especially on those jagged mountain passes with drop-offs to the side that seemed a million feet down. There had been smaller bikes, but she had chosen this one because of the lock... perhaps she should have tried to extract a Vespa first. She just hoped she wouldn't have to do any chin-ups in the next twenty-four hours.

After taking a couple of wrong roads, she saw the green roof in the distance. The road she happened to be on then seemed to pass right in front of it. Indeed, once again, she found herself parking the bike and hiking a short distance up the hill to a sacred Buddhist site.

She rapped on the bamboo door. Another little door opened at eye-level, and another pair of eyes stared out at her, through a pair of glasses.

"Yes?"

"Hi, my name is Martha Jones, and I'm looking for a monk called Lobsang Samten."

"Are you family?" he asked. "We're not supposed to let in any family."

Martha smiled. They were taking the Doctor's advice. "Do I look like family?" she asked him, pointing at her face.

"Hm," he said. The eyes disappeared from the opening without an actual word, but the tiny door stayed open. She heard what probably passed for commotion inside the monastery, and thirty seconds later, a new pair of eyes appeared.

"Martha!" Lobsang Samten cried. "What brings you here?"

"The Doctor is infected," she said flatly. "Can I come in?"

"Yes, of course," he said, shutting the little door in order to open the large one.

The door swung out, and Martha stepped in. Without being told, she removed her shoes. "I need your help."

He bowed. "I'll do whatever is in my power."

"Is there a television station in Lhasa?" she asked.

"Of course," he said. "But it's run by the Chinese government."

"Okay," she said, biting her thumbnail, thinking. "Oh, hang on!" She searched her pockets and found her mobile phone, and dialled London information. Thank heaven for universal roaming.

Lobsang Samten looked at her with wonder and confusion. "Who are you phoning? I'm sorry, but we frown on that here."

"I'm sorry, I'll just be a moment," she insisted. Then, into the receiver, she said, "Hello, I need the number for BBC News. Yes, I'll hold the line."

"What are you doing?" the monk wanted to know. "How will this help our patients, or your Doctor?"

She covered the mouthpiece. "Let me finish with this call, and then... is there somewhere we can talk in private?"

* * *

On the back balcony of the monastery, concealed by the slope and minimal trees, Martha told Lobsang Samten what she needed him to do.

"Martha, that's asking a lot," the monk told her. "We live quiet lives here. We solve our problems through meditation, by removing ourselves from the karmic cycle."

"I know," she said. "But look around you. People are going mad all over the world, and nowhere is it worse than here in Lhasa. The world needs our help – and I'm sorry, but no one is going to listen to me. They'll listen to you."

"I don't see how it will help."

She sighed. "Look, I know it seems odd, but the Doctor and I, we know what's causing the virus to spread."

"He said he didn't know."

"He worked it out. He's quick that way."

"So what is it?"

"I don't think you'd believe me if I told you the whole story," she said. "It has to do with... well, aliens."

"Aliens?" he cried out. "Are you serious?"

"Completely," she replied, her face set tightly. "That's why the Doctor, _my Doctor_, has been the only one so far who could work it out. He's an alien too – he understands. All the human doctors are looking for a biological cause, but I'm telling you, they will never find it. It's not terrestrial in origin, and the Doctor is the only man on the planet right know who fully understands what's happening."

"Your Doctor."

"Yes," she gulped, for the first time, allowing herself briefly to feel the sting of what she had lost, if only temporarily. "My Doctor."

"But he's afflicted."

"Yes," she told him again. "That's why you have to follow my lead, do what I say. He's out of the game now, and all I know is what he's told me. So we need him back. If we don't get him back..."

"What?"

She leaned with her bum against the balcony's railing, crossing her arms. Her face felt hot, like a fever. "Lobsang Samten, do you remember a couple of years back when a spaceship crashed in London, and the world almost went nuclear trying to take out the alien race that had sent it?"

He seemed surprised at the question. "I remember."

"How do you think it is that no nuclear weapons got launched? How do you think we were saved from destroying our own planet?"

"We were told that the Chinese Ambassador to the UN talked the other ministers into solving the problem peaceably."

"That was a lie," Martha said flatly.

"I knew it!"

"It was the Doctor. He took out those same aliens with a single military torpedo, and nearly destroyed himself and his friends in the process, just to save the Earth." Her face felt hot, she noted once again. The crisp mountain air felt good – she was glad they had decided to come outside.

"I just figured it had been a hoax," he said.

"No hoax. Remember when random people were suddenly standing on rooftops, threatening to throw themselves off?"

"Yes! We almost lost a third of our brothers!"

"The Doctor worked it out, and fought in a battle _to the death_ with the beings that had done that. He was in a sword fight, and literally lost a limb in doing so."

"But he has all his limbs. I'd have noticed if he didn't."

"I told you – he's not human. His limbs grow back. And do you remember a year ago when there were all those ghosts? They would show up periodically for days, and then eventually, they turned into those Cyberman things?"

His eyes widened like a child's. "Yes."

"The Doctor vanquished them." God, she was hot. And only now was it occurring to her why.

"How?" he wanted to know, eyes still wide.

"He sucked them into a... well, a dimensional portal and exiled them to a zero space between universes," she said. "And when he did that, he lost his best friend."

"Oh my," Lobsang Samten sighed.

"And that hospital that went to the moon?"

"Yes, we heard about that – we heard it was a hoax as well."

"No. I was there. We both were. The Doctor saved me – we saved each other. This planet would have been barbecued, but he gave his life so that the alien who caused that could be captured and brought to justice."

"Gave his life?"

"Yes," she said. "I was able to revive him with CPR, thank heaven."

"But he wouldn't have known that..."

"Do you see? The Doctor is our only line of defence against the horrors of the universe which the human race is just not ready for," she said, her voice breaking, her face hot, now knowing that she was all but lost. Her vision went blurry, and she turned and faced up the mountain and gripped the guardrail hard. She could feel herself losing to the Vitiatum, but she allowed herself to let go, stop fighting because _this_ was the only way that the monk would believe her. He needed to _feel_ the Doctor's goodness, his power, he needed to understand why the world can't be without him. "And every time he saves the world or the universe or our very existence, it costs him a little piece of himself. He has sacrificed everything, _everything_ for the people he loves, for the universe, for our planet. He has suffered – oh, he's suffered..."

She turned and looked at Lobsang Samten. The monk took a startled step back when he realised what he was seeing. "Martha, your face!"

"I know," she said, falling to her knees, gripping at the wooden deck beneath. "You can throw me in the cage with the other four, but first, you have to listen."

He didn't say anything, he just stared at her with wonder.

"The Doctor has suffered for you, more than you can imagine. He has lost so much of himself, so much of what he is, who he once was, even given away years of his life to stop negative energy from flowing into our world."

Finally, the monk got to his knees beside her. "I'm beginning to see, Martha."

"We can't be without him," she said, sobbing, half-crazed now. She grabbed onto his arms. "We have to save him, Lobsang... we can't let him... he is... he's saved me, he's saved you... he's given up everything... I can't let him do it again... we cannot exist... I cannot exist without him... I can't live... and I'll never love anyone as much... God, I'll never love anyone as much..."

She collapsed on the wooden boards, and when she looked back up at him, her eyes were black and her face had gone plasticky red. "Please, they're on their way," she begged. "Please help us. They're coming, Lobsang... and we only get one chance – they won't come back. Please do what I asked. Please!"

"Martha, Martha," he whined, trying to get control of her now writhing body. "What can I do _for you_?"

In her last coherent moment, she whispered, "Lock... me... up!"


	19. Chapter 19

**THE OBJECTIVE OF THIS CHAPTER IS TO ANSWER THE QUESTION: WHY ON EARTH WOULD A BUDDHIST MONK HELP MARTHA, WHEN HIS ENTIRE PURPOSE IN LIFE IS TO STAY OUT OF THE FRAY? **

**PLEASE BEAR WITH ME - I HOPE YOU FIND IT INTERESTING. ALL SUSPENSEFUL CLIFFHANGING ASIDE, IT'S A CHALLENGE CONTINUING A TEN/MARTHA STORY WHEN TEN AND MARTHA ARE OUT OF COMMISSION!!**

* * *

NINETEEN

Mad Red had been rampant in Lhasa over the last few days, and none of the cases had been pretty. Lobsang Samten stood in front of a metal cage that the monks had once used for housing exotic ceremonial animals in the days before the Chinese regulated the incomings and outgoings of wildlife. Inside, were two of his brethren, blood brothers in their orange robes, and their parents, and Martha Jones. He had been just barely able to get her inside the monastery and down the steps before she lost all control and began exhibiting the viciousness unique to Mad Red. After that, it had taken three grown men to get her under lock and key, not counting the two standing guard at the gate to the cage, holding off the four previous occupants with cattle prods.

There had been nothing easy about this disease, no answers, no precedence, no ending in sight, and the only consolation was that it doesn't seem to kill – at least not yet. That might be good news in the West, but it came as little comfort to Buddhist monks who find solace in meditative removal from the mortal coil, and spend their lives trying to achieve a higher plane. Wouldn't these people be better off if they were given the opportunity to leave this world and start anew? Their families could be released from the want of a better existence, which inevitably leads to unhappiness, and the victims themselves could begin again.

Such had been the thought round the monasteries in Lhasa. It was not the practise for a Buddhist to wish death upon anyone, but any human being who is interested in divine mastery of any sort is not happy to see another human being's suffering.

And Lobsang Samten was fairly certain that this is what Lama Chophal would say if he brought up task that Martha Jones had set before him. He would tell him again about the simple life, devoid of want, the quest for total spiritual freedom – who are they to interfere with the world's affairs? The monastic life is about remaining as uninvolved as possible. Perhaps it is this ethic that keeps monasteries all over the city and region free from internal Mad Red cases, with few exceptions...

Yes, this is definitely what Lama Chophal would say. And who was he, Lobsang Samten, to argue? He was the leader of their order, he had been a Buddhist monk for longer than Lobsang had been alive, and he was clever, a force to be reckoned with.

But with all that, and even with the previous cases of Mad Red that he had seen thus far, there was something different about this one. He stood and watched, along with several other monks, as the five afflicted humans snarled within the cage, circling round each other like baboons, the family group nervous at the sight of a newcomer. He kept his eyes on Martha, marvelling at the fact that just ten minutes before, she had been a perfectly rational, reasonable human being (if a bit wound up). And he had watched her – _watched her_ – lose her mind. She had collapsed and melted into an animal right in front of him. He fought back tears watching her... he knew that the memory of this was something that would most definitely keep him tied to this life for quite a long time.

"Who is she?" someone asked suddenly, yanking Lobsang Samten out of his thoughts.

He turned. Lama Chophal was there, looking sternly at him. "I'm not sure, Lama."

"Well, you brought her in here," he said. "She came to see you. How can you not know who she is?"

For an awful moment, Lobsang Samten wondered if Lama Chophal suspected the worst of his relationship with Martha Jones. But rather than defend his own position, he said, "I met her in town earlier today," he said. "She was with a man – her partner or her husband, I think. A doctor. They were trying to help."

"Ah," the Lama said, seeming to relax. "And what is that?" He was gesturing to Lobsang's left hand.

"I'm not sure about that either," Lobsang Samten answered, examining the thing again. "When the brothers took her coat off, it fell out of the pocket. It might be a very small torch, except it has several buttons."

"Does it light up?"

"I haven't tried it yet."

"Interesting. May I see?"

The younger monk passed the device to the elder, who pushed one of the buttons. The blue light came on and the electronic pulse of the sonic screwdriver filled the room with its hum. It startled the old Lama, and he smiled delightedly, pushing up his glasses. He pushed another button and shined it against the wall. Though the light did not reflect much, soon, there was a small hole forming in the concrete.

"Fascinating!" Lama Chophal said, handing it back to Lobsang Samten. "I wonder what else is in her pockets."

The younger monk raised an eyebrow at his leader. "Lama Chophal..."

"I'm just curious," the old man insisted. "We'll put it all in a box and return it to her when she is well again, just like we did with the others. I just want to see what else she carries with her."

The Lama was speaking with a whimsical tone, which suggested he really was innocently curious. And anyway, how would an underling like Lobsang stop him?

They crossed the room to a bamboo table which had Martha Jones' black parka draped over it. Lama Chophal reached into the pocket and extracted a mobile phone and a tube of lipstick, which he insisted on uncovering and investigating. Lobsang Samten had to stifle a giggle at the thought that his Lama might try it on. He found a small wallet, which he opened to find thirty-eight pounds, two bank cards, a Starbucks gift card, different punch cards to sandwich shops and dry cleaners around London, and a European Union ID card, identifying Martha Jones as a subject of Great Britain.

"She was born in 1984," the younger monk mused. "Only twenty-three." He looked back at the cage and wondered if it all ends here, so soon after it began.

When he looked further, he found a photo of Martha and the Doctor posing together in happier times, and a separate photo of what he assumed was Martha's family. He recognised her in the photo, as well as another attractive girl of roughly the same age, a sister most likely, and a young man, probably a brother. Their parents looked wealthy, loving and happy. Again he looked into the cage and watched Martha Jones literally growl at two monks and two elderly citizens. Buddhism, of course, discourages uselessly wishing for the past to change, but goodness, did he wish this situation hadn't come about.

When he looked back, Lama Chophal was turning something over in his hands.

"What is that?" asked Lobsang Samten, mildly ashamed at how easily he'd fallen into this game of snooping.

"Nothing," the elder monk answered, handing it off. "Just a bit of blank paper."

Lobsang Samten opened it. But he did not find blank paper. He found a note that read, _"Lobsang Samten, the only two people on Earth who have offered a solution are now afflicted and helpless. Do not dishonour them by doing nothing."_

His jaw dropped open. He tried to speak, but only a choked sound came out.

"What's wrong?" asked the Lama.

Lobsang Samten handed him the little folder and told him to read it. The old man obliged, but again, he saw nothing but white.

Lobsang looked again, and saw the same message scrawled in a neat hand – most likely a woman's. Why couldn't Lama Chophal see it? It was as plain as day!

"You really can't see it?"

"See what?"

"There is a message here!" The younger monk held the psychic paper out to him insistently, willing him to see it.

The Lama looked closer, even adjusting his bifocals higher on his face. "Lobsang Samten, there is nothing there!"

The younger man was crestfallen. He threw the little folder on the table and sighed.

"Are you feeling quite all right?" asked the Lama. "Are you becoming afflicted?"

"No, I don't think so," Lobsang Samten said. "Maybe I'm just tired. Overly traumatised from seeing Martha Jones lose her mind."

"Perhaps you should lie down."

"Perhaps I should." Lobsang Samten moved to leave, and the Lama turned his back and strode back over to the cage. As he did, Lobsang clandestinely palmed the psychic paper and Martha's wallet and hid it in the folds of his robe.

* * *

He shared a narrow sleeping compartment with another monk, a young Chinese man. Each had a small shelf beside the bed whereupon personal effects could be kept, and a shelf at the foot of the bed where prayer books belonged. Lobsang Samten shoved the psychic paper beneath a miniature Eiffel Tower which his young cousin had given him after a trip to Europe, and put the wallet on the second shelf. He sat on his bed and attempted to meditate, but he found that his attachment to Martha Jones was too great, the experience too dramatic. He could not let go of the sight of her face turning red, her body crumpling... the words she had said just before it had happened.

He went over and over in his mind, against his will, the way she had choked back tears as she had called him _My Doctor. _He thought of the unabashed emotion she had shown at the very end, how she had declared so fully that she'd never love anyone as much as she loved that Doctor. He would never have that feeling, never in this lifetime. He had been twenty-eight and loveless when he'd joined the order, and his devotion to the Way saw to it that he'd never experience earthly love. He did not resent nor deny it, it was simply something he would never have – like wings for flying. And in turn, he could not begrudge that love, could not ignore it. Martha Jones and the Doctor deserved to be together properly, if such was the love that they shared. It had literally brought Martha to her knees – how could he deny her that? She had told him all the things the Doctor had done to save the world so that he would feel that the human race is indebted to him, to show why the world needs the Doctor. But in reality, the fact that _Martha_ needs him was enough for Lobsang. Her lecture had served an entirely different purpose than its objective.

Unable to help himself, he stole a look at the paper again. "_Lobsang Samten, the only two people on Earth who have offered a solution are now afflicted and helpless. Do not dishonour them by doing nothing,"_ it read, just as before.

And it was true. Every genius scientist on planet Earth was clueless, except for one. No biologist nor epidemiologist nor internist nor anaesthesiologist had found a solution or even a cause – but Martha's Doctor had. When no one is speaking but one, who should we listen to? Aside from the love, aside from the Earth's debt to the Doctor, there was simply this: the Doctor and Martha were offering to help, and the alternative is to do languish as before.

_Your choice, Lobsang Samten._

A noise startled him. He concealed the psychic paper and Martha's wallet once more and peered out the tiny window, down onto the road that passed in front of the monastery. A white square van was approaching. Lobsang Samten dashed out of his sleeping compartment and down the stairs. Other monks saw him move like lightning through the front door of the monastery, but it had been a weird few days – no-one asked any questions. Besides, they all knew he'd been a bit disturbed by the incident with Martha Jones, and the Lama had wasted no time in warning them all that he was hallucinating...

* * *

Daniel Fitzpatrick, the BBC News correspondent assigned to cover the Mad Red situation in Lhasa was the first to see the man in orange in the middle of the road, flagging them down.

"Stop the van," he said to the driver. "There's a monk in the road."

As Fitzpatrick climbed out of the vehicle into bracing early evening air, the driver muttered, "Now there's something you don't hear every day."

Li Dao-ming, a BBC affiliate who worked in the Tibet Autonomous Region of China, climbed out of the van after him, figuring her services as interpreter would be needed.

"My God, man, what are you doing in the middle of the road? Are you Lobsang Samten?" Fitzpatrick asked.

Via Dao-ming, he answered, "Yes, I am, and I have a message for the world."

"So I have been told. Where is Martha Jones?"

"Afflicted. Indisposed."

"I see. Come with us, please."

Lobsang Samten reluctantly agreed. He was uncomfortable being in this van with these people, but he had made his decision now. There was no turning back – he was in this, literally and figuratively. Although, he found the process of interpreting from Tibetan to English and back exceedingly tedious. He wished these folks spoke perfect Tibetan as Martha and her Doctor had. He wondered where in Great Britain they had learned it, and why the BBC couldn't send someone like them...

"Now what is it exactly that you want?" asked Fitzpatrick, as the van made its way back down the mountain.

"Martha Jones and this Doctor seem to know what is causing this phenomenon," the monk explained. "But they are both afflicted now. Miss Jones has charged me with getting the message to the world that might help. I'll need to make a video of myself speaking, and broadcast an image or two."

"And what will be the contents of the video?"

"It's a call for love."


	20. Chapter 20

TWENTY

Tish Jones' newest thing was to be a vegetarian. Francine wasn't sure why, and she didn't ask. She basically didn't want to know, had given up asking about these things, didn't care. Her daughter would very soon be over it and on to something else, possibly Mystic Sufism or the Raw diet.

In any case, Tish sat in the corner of the sofa at her mother's house, sulkily picking little pieces of sausage off a slice of pizza. She had, as she had put it, been _dumped_ that week, and as always had turned to her family for support. And with her sister in a (God help her) happy relationship, she'd rather be with her embittered mum. They could exchange sob stories with each other, as long as her mum agreed to use euphemisms and no names.

She curled her legs up under her, and Francine sat down beside her. They had planned a girly Saturday, complete with pizza, wine, _Steel Magnolias_ and a good bitch session.

Francine had already prepared the DVD, now she switched on the TV. She did that, while biting into a piece of pizza, and her thumb moved up to the button marked "input," when Tish grabbed her arm. "Hang on, I want to see this."

A face afflicted with Mad Red appeared on the screen. Francine caught a chill and shuddered.

"What's wrong, mum?"

"The last time I spoke to your sister, she said that she and _that Doctor_ were out trying to find a cure for this thing," Francine said through clenched teeth.

Tish looked at her with confusion. "Well that's good, isn't it? Two clever people on the case that no one else can work out? It'd be like if they'd had Columbo in the days of Jack the Ripper."

"Tish, it's not good!" Francine insisted. "She could be out there catching this thing, getting her hands dirty or what-have-you, and getting sick! And the Doctor too."

"Since when do you care about him?" Tish asked with a smirk.

Francine turned and looked at her with disdain. "I don't. But if Martha's sick, _and_ he's sick, then neither one of them stands a chance," she said. Then she sighed with great drama and looked sidelong at Tish. "They're sleeping together, you know."

"Well, yeah," Tish shrugged, biting into her pizza. Chewing, she said, "I cou'a to' you dat."

"No, I mean... like... not _sleeping_, but..."

"I know what you mean, mum," Tish said, smiling, forgetting her own troubles for a moment. "And Martha's a big girl. This is not the first relationship with _not sleeping_ she's had, you know."

"He's dangerous, Tish."

"Why, because some bloke at a party told you so?"

"That man works for Saxon!"

"So he says! Oh, I know!" Tish stuck out her hand to be shaked. "I'm Letitia Jones, I'm on the Queen's executive staff in charge of clothing issues, and I'd like to warn you that that shirt you're wearing contains microfibres that could kill you. Better fret over it and replace your wardrobe all with _our_ line of clothing."

Francine batted her hand away, and hissed, "Cheeky." She took another bite, swallowed and said, "Both of you girls – rude! No respect!" With that, she grabbed the remote and turned up the volume on the television, signalling that she'd like to discuss this no further.

The news reader was saying, "The situation seems to have stabilized in Lhasa, Tibet Autonomous Region, where the outbreak has been worse than anywhere. There are still pockets of people unafflicted all over the city, most notably the numerous Buddhist monasteries, but it is estimated that three-fourths of the population is now ill with Mad Red. We go now to Daniel Fitzpatrick, our foreign correspondent covering the situation in Lhasa."

Fitzpatrick's blonde, thinning hair and pink English face appeared on-screen, the Potala Palace looming incongruously in the background. "You're absolutely right, Susan. Most of the unaffected pockets here in Lhasa are monasteries. However, there is one exception that we know of," he said, stepping to his left. He put his hand on the shoulder of a monk. "This is brother Lobsang Samten, a member of a holy order, one of the oldest in Tibet. He tells us that his particular order has five cases of Mad Red within – two fellow monks, and three outsiders. Hello, Lobsang Samten."

The monk replied in English, "Hello." He smiled uneasily – English sounded so strange on his tongue.

Fitzpatrick smiled at the monk, then became serious for the camera. "This address is being transmitted throughout the world, including on a subversive digital broadcast here in Lhasa itself. It is a call to arms, so to speak, to all Buddhists. It's a call for love." He turned and looked at Lobsang Samten, cuing the camera to pan to him.

As the monk began to speak in Tibetan, an unseen woman's voice took over in accented English.

"Buddhists of the world, and indeed all divine loving peoples of the world, I ask for your help today. Our world is sick, possibly dying, and there is no-one who can fix it. There is no cure known to western or eastern medicine, there is no remedy, long or short term, there is no answer as to cause or prevention. We are helpless. We are in need. And _you_ can help.

"My friends, the Buddha teaches us that all things are connected, everything in the universe. Every molecule, every atom. Every tree, every flower, every dog, cat, human or insect – we are all living parts of one greater organism, therefore if those among us are ill, so are we all. But there is hope. If those among us are healthy of mind and spirit, then there is a chance of spreading that peace to all things.

"And what can be more peaceful, more healthy for the mind and spirit than pure love?"

Upon the screen came a photograph of about twenty monks, lined up in a row, smiling. The camera zoomed in on two of them.

"This is an image of two of my brethren, now taken with Mad Red. This photo was taken on the day when they accepted their holy calling and became part of our monastic community. Never had we encountered such pure hearts, such humour, such vigour of life. They had close family ties, and were visited often by their parents and sisters. But today, these two young men are under lock and key because they are a danger to themselves and to others. They are locked in a cage _with their parents_, who have also come under the effects of Mad Red."

For a moment, the interpreter's voice stopped, and simply let Lobsang Samten's emotion speak for itself. One did not have to understand Tibetan to comprehend the tears in his eyes.

Then the camera went back to an emotional Lobsang Samten, his body tight, his arms in a pleading stance. When the English narrative picked up, it said, "Think of the two young women who are tonight without their parents, and without their brothers. Who will provide humour in their lives now? Who will give guidance now that their parents have left them? I ask you, my friends, to consider this. Picture your own brother, mother, father, locked in a cage, circling one another like animals, unable to feel or to reason. Empathy is a blessing and a malady, friends, but I ask you to show it now."

He paused for effect. He cleared his throat and appeared to be trying to pull his emotions into check. And then, "Our monastery is, by chance, housing another victim of Mad Red. She is a young woman from Great Britian. Her name is Martha Jones."

With this revelation, Francine's hand began to shake and the remote fell to the glass coffee table with a loud clang. Her face went ghostly grey, and Tish leaned forward to take her shoulders.

And then, on the screen, the photo that Marth carried with her, that of Martha herself, Tish, Leo, Francine and Clive appeared. The English narrative continued.

"Martha came to Lhasa just today, along with a western doctor. I met them in town, as I had been sent into the city to try and help the sick and/or wounded – they were apparently on the same mission. They tried to protect me – her friend told me to keep myself safe in the monastery. I obeyed, but when I saw Martha Jones again, she was asking for my help because her friend had himself been afflicted. And now, Martha is afflicted too. I watched her as she talked about other cases, and evolved rather quickly into one of them – I watched her fall to her knees and lose her mind in less than two minutes. It happened right before my eyes. It was horrific, and a thing I will never forget. Another clever, lovely, loving, and clearly _loved_ girl taken by a senseless disease."

There was another pause, and the monk could be heard to clear his throat once more. Then when he spoke again, his voice wavered, which Francine and Tish noticed just as the English voice took over. "As you can see from this photo, Martha Jones has a family back home. A sister, a brother, a mother and a father. I did not know her well enough to ask their names, but they are out there somewhere, my friends, and they have lost their daughter and their sister, perhaps forever. Imagine their grief, their suffering. Imagine them someplace in the world, clutching each other with sadness, knowing there is no cure for what ails their precious Martha."

Francine burst into tears, and the scene in the parlour became very much as the monk had just described. Tish couldn't hold back her tears either. They sobbed into each others' shoulders, all previous gripes forgotten – everything else in the world suddenly forgotten.

The image of the monk returned to the screen. He was openly weeping now, and his body language suggested supplication and misery. It had probably been a decade since Lobsang Samten had felt so strongly about anything. "But! Imagine also how lucky you are. Look around at the people in your life. Love them. Cherish them. Hold their hands and tell them how glad you are to be a part of their little world. _This is how you can help!_ As I have said, if some of us are pure of heart, mind, spirit, then we all can be! This world is one! It's not just Buddhists united now, it's everyone who has ever loved anyone! Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Shintos, Bantus, atheists, astrophysicists, everyone! The situation in Lhasa is dire, my friends, such that simple prayer or meditation might not help. Do not send money or clothing or food – what we need is your heart. Our misery is _concentrated_, and so must be our efforts. This is a call for love. This is a call for pilgrimage. Such a thing is rarely asked of the Buddhists of the world, but if ever there was a time for a gesture above and beyond, my friends, _that time is now!_ Bring your loved ones. Come here! Be with us! Offer your love! This is all we ask! It is, my friends, my loved ones, the only way!"

Daniel Fitzpatrick closed the report quickly, with tears in his eyes, and the report was followed by a video montage of before-and-after Mad Red cases, with sappy music and the occasional video clip of someone screaming and crying over their loved one, lost to madness.

Francine stood up suddenly, startling Tish. "Ring your father," she commanded before stalking upstairs.

When she reached the top of the steps, she turned mechanically right into her bedroom. She began shoving clothes mindlessly into a suitcase – sweaters, jeans, knickers, boots, pyjamas, socks. Then she hit the bathroom. Toothbrush, deodorant, shampoo, conditioner, makeup, night cream...

"He's on his way round," Tish said from the doorway.

"Did you tell him to pack his bags?"

"I didn't have to. He saw it too."


	21. Chapter 21

TWENTY ONE

"Eight-thousand and counting," said Lama Chophal, letting the door close behind him. He was now standing on the side balcony of the monastery, which looked out over the valley cradling Lhasa. Lobsang Samten had been standing there for over an hour, gripping the guardrail with white knuckles. The Lama knew that the younger monk had attempted to meditate this morning, but it was a lost cause.

Lobsang Samten nodded, just barely. The city hadn't looked so alive and teeming with life, ever in his memory.

"I can't believe this many people have turned out in just twenty-four hours," Lama Chophal commented. He put his hand on Lobsang's shoulder. "They're here. Are you ready for this?"

"No," he answered simply.

"You must finish what you started, Lobsang Samten. You chose to get involved. You know that that carries with it a price, no matter how noble your actions."

"Yes," he answered, again, simply.

The Lama led him back through the monastery, past the curious stares and well-wishes of their bretheren, and through the front door. They walked in silence down the path to the road where the BBC van was waiting. He was nervous, though Fitzpatrick had assured him that all he had to do was show up and do what he did before. Lobsang bowed to his Lama, and then crawled into the van with Daniel Fitzpatrick, Li Dao-ming, another monk, and the driver. He shook hands with the westerners and the Chinese woman, and bowed to the monk.

Dao-ming was first to speak, in Tibetan. "Good morning, Lobsang Samten. Did you sleep well?"

"I didn't sleep at all."

"Are you nervous?"

"Extremely. Last I heard, there are eight thousand people out there."

Dao-ming said something to Fitzpatrick in English which he didn't understand. Then she said, "Actually, that was four hours ago. Now it's closer to fifteen thousand."

This was not helping Lobsang Samten's nerves. "Fifteen thousand?"

"Yes, well," she said, almost apologetically. "Every affiliate of the BBC broadcast your address, which means Bombay, Beijing, Toronto and about twenty others. And every major network in America has picked it up, Canal Plus in Europe, satellite networks in South America and Japan, and it's a viral e-mail video spreading in the Middle East. Youtube has had more than a hundred thousand hits on it. Your speech has been translated into eighty languages and aired round-the-clock. It's big."

Lobsang looked at her with a mixture of awe and complete terror.

She smiled. "Don't look so surprised. You are offering _the only _help, Lobsang. No one, anywhere in the world, has spoken up, except for you."

He sighed. That's what he'd been telling himself the day before about Martha Jones and her Doctor. Little did he know then that he'd wind up as their living mouthpiece to the world.

"Don't worry, brother," said the other monk. "I will be right by your side."

"Who are you?" Lobsang asked politely.

"Chogyal Jinpa. I will be your interpreter when you speak to the people."

Lobsang looked at Dao-ming.

"I thought it would be better if another monk delivered your address in English, instead of a staid-looking Chinese woman in a suit," she said, smiling. "It's better this way, yes?"

"Yes, it's a lovely idea," Lobsang Samten agreed. "It's more authentic for the people who do not understand Tibetan. Do we have any other languages?"

Dao-ming, again, spoke to Fitzpatrick. Then she replied, "We're working on it. We may have a Catholic priest from Colombia who is willing to do English to Spanish translation, which is promising. Only he's been held up at the aeroport."

Lobsang nodded.

Fitzpatrick asked Dao-ming a question. She translated. "Is it all right with you if he's Catholic? Apparently, we've had a huge Catholic turn-out, mostly from Argentina and the U.S. for some reason."

"Of course," he said. "The message is love. Every religion preaches love."

"Exactly," she said, sitting back. "We're also working on Arabic and French, but I'm not sure we'll get that done in time."

Lobsang looked at Chogyal Jinpa directly, and said, "Thank you for agreeing to help."

Chogyal Jinpa replied, "Martha Jones came to my monastery yesterday searching for you. When I saw her photo on the television, I recognised her, and was horrified to learn she had been afflicted. I had to get involved, in spite of the price."

Lobsang Samten bowed subtly in understanding and thanks. Then he looked out the window to his right and his breath was sucked out of his lungs by the sight of fifteen thousand people from all over the world, gathered round a stage in Lhasa's town centre. He held his breath as they made their way down the last of the hill into the cleared area behind the stage.

They exited the vehicle. Something caught Lobsang Samten's eye. "What's that blue thing?" He pointed at it with a quizzical expression, such that Fitzpatrick simply answered the question without being told what he was asking.

"It's peculiar isn't it? Those used to be dotted throughout Great Britain as a place to keep a suspect while a police officer called for backup. They disappeared in the 1960's, though, and hell if I know what it's doing in Tibet, of all places! Anyway, we had to move it out of the way when we put up the stage."

Li Dao-ming translated for Lobsang. He nodded absently and walked toward it and pushed on the door. It was locked – he'd expected as much. But the funny thing was, though Fitzpatrick had told him that it was a British artefact, the words "Police Public Call Box" were written in Tibetan. Lobsang simply shrugged at the curiosity, and turned his attention back to the task at-hand.

* * *

"I don't understand what we're doing _here_," Francine Jones exclaimed. "We should be looking for Martha!"

Leo rolled his eyes. "Mum, would you just relax? We came here to help. These people believe that our love and prayer will help them, so let's give them everything we've got, all right? We can't just traipse through their city and give nothing back."

"But we're not religious!"

"So? _They_ are. Let's help them, come on!"

Francine sighed heavily, and in spite of herself, followed her son. She was obliged to latch her fingers through his belt buckles in order not to lose him in the crowd of, last she heard, twenty thousand. She looked back, and luckily, Tish was still hanging onto her backpack, and behind her, Clive had tight hold of Tish's wrist. They formed a chain and weaved their way through the throng, hoping to get as close to the stage as possible.

Throughout the crowd, every now and then, people would recognise the Jones family from the photo they'd seen on the television. A few people had reached out to touch Francine's shoulder to offer what she assumed was condolance or support, but mostly, she couldn't understand them. When it happened, she would mutter "Thank you," and keep moving.

When they could absolutely not advance a step further, they stopped. The four of them joined hands and waited for something to happen. A photo of the two monks housed in the monastery with Mad Red was looming on a giant screen above the stage, and three microphones were set up. Music had been playing in every language imaginable, and when Francine listened, she heard at least six being spoken in the immediate vicinity, and that's only if she didn't count her own family's native English.

Suddenly, the crowd began to go quiet and the music went away. Twenty thousand people were silent as Daniel Fitzpatrick of BBC News appeared on the stage in his blue suit, white shirt and pink tie. Behind him, a monk followed. Each took their place at a microphone, and as Fitzpatrick spoke, the monk translated each line into Tibetan, a second or two behind.

"Hello friends. What a beautiful turnout – thank you for coming this morning, most of you from far and wide. This is truly a sight to behold, and a wonderful example of how the world may come together when we find ourselves in human turmoil. My name is Daniel Fitzpatrick, and I work for BBC News as a foreign correspondent. Yesterday, you were made to be familiar with two Buddhist monks, brothers from right here in Tibet, and their parents, who are afflicted with Mad Red." He gestured to the photo on the screen above. "You were also made familiar with a westerner named Martha Jones who came here with a friend, looking for answers, only to be taken with the disease themselves."

A picture of Martha and the Doctor appeared on the screen, a photo that the Jones family had never seen. Francine's hand flew to her mouth, stifling the whimper that was bubbling in her throat. Leo pulled her close for comfort.

"You were also introduced to a man called Lobsang Samten, a monk of the same order as the two afflicted sons. Though we are here for the sake of those who have fallen ill, he is the man whose voice has brought you here today, has moved you to _do something_ when it seemed that nothing could be done. And he's here, so let's welcome him."

Lobsang Samten appeared at left, and walked to the middle of the stage slowly, shaking. He was greeted with cheers and applause, and at this, he smiled gratefully. A Catholic priest followed him and took his place at the third microphone as Daniel Fitzpatrick stepped out of view.

When he spoke, he spoke Tibetan, line-by-line. The translation to English from the second monk followed, and then the Spanish from the priest.

"Good morning. Mr. Fitzpatrick is right – this is, indeed, a wonderful example of how the world comes together when there is a human crisis. And that is what this is, my friends. A _human _crisis. This exists outside of nations, outside of territory or language or class or anything we have created as men. This exists in our very humanity, this sickness. It is unique to us as a species, and it is ravaging, not distinguishing. And that makes us one – all the same. Buddhism teaches us that we are, literally, all as one. From one atom, from one consciousness we sprang, and to one consciousness we shall someday return. Christianity and Judaism and Islam teach us that the cosmos and all consciousness was created in the image of a single God. Is this not the same teaching? We are one in our beliefs, and we are one in our minds and bodies and hearts! Today, we shall prove it. I ask you now to turn to your loved ones and link hands or link arms."

As each language unfurled this message, twenty thousand bodies, in waves, turned slightly to face people with whom they had arrived. The Jones family put their arms around each others' shoulders, and their heads together. Francine and Tish were crying – the men were not far away.

"How much do you love the people you're facing now?" asked Lobsang Samten. "Feel it fully. Look at them. Be one with them. Think about the time you've had together. Think about being apart. Think about your life without these people, the loneliness you would feel, and how grateful you are that they have saved you from that! Aren't you grateful? Aren't you blessed, just unbelievably lucky to have them?"

All over the crowd, people were crying, hugging, muttering things into the shoulders of their mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, spouses and children. In a million languages, love was being spoken. But in a single signal, an unspoken language of sorts, love was hovering in the air above in tight concentration. The fifth element.

And to Lobsang Samten's utter horror, as he spoke and continued to encourage the throng, Mad Red began at the corners of the crowd. Right in front of the stage, he watched with nausea as an entire family fell to their knees and went swiftly insane the way Martha Jones had. And then another family, and then another. Complete chaos ensued as Mad Red victims rushed the stage and overflowed the side barriers of the town centre. The place was now flooded over, and he could see people, completely crazed, heading into the hills, further down the valley, anywhere in search of food. They were battling, families thirty seconds ago immersed in love now clawing at each other like mountain lions.

But then, so quickly, all of the newly afflicted patients began convulsing. They stopped in their tracks and simply began to shake. Most of them found themselves on the ground in fits of seizure, and there were terrible, horrible cries coming from all over the valley. It was deafening, occupying his entire head and body.

Lobsang Samten closed his eyes and removed himself. A deep mystic meditation found him, for the first time in more than twenty-four hours, and he could see it all. It wasn't just here, it was all over the world. Egypt, Colorado, Brazil and Tahiti – those with the disease were on the ground, siezing, their families and doctors watching in terror, closing their ears against the screaming. Their consciousnesses were calling out for freedom, their humanity dying to climb out from behind the cloak of sickness. All of their cries, all of their misery was becoming one now, and Lobsang swore he saw all of it ball up into itself like a great dark cloud. It seemed to amass, grow dense like a black hole and writhe with evil.

And just as quickly as it had begun, the black hole turned itself inside-out. A lip seemed to come from within and swallow the great ball whole, leaving nothing but air.

When Lobsang Samten opened his eyes, the city centre was filled again with human beings, loving, caring, confused, but with healthy pink and brown faces. Those who had fled were coming back to find their families, those who had stayed began helping each other up off the ground, muttering, asking questions, hugging once more. And without having to sink into a mystic state again, Lobsang Samten knew that it was not just here, it was everywhere.


	22. Chapter 22

**TWO MORE CHAPTERS TO GO... THIS HAS BEEN HARROWING AND EMOTIONAL! I'M SO GLAD Y'ALL ARE STILL ON BOARD. SERIOUSLY. EMOTIONAL.**

**WINDING DOWN, HERE WE GO...!**

* * *

TWENTY-TWO

Martha Jones seemed to wake as if from a nightmare. She was in a cage with four other people, and had no memory of them or the cage, but she remembered being on the back balcony and going mad as the monk watched. She had no idea how long she'd been in there, but she knew why. And now she knew it was over. What she had told Lobsang Samten to do had worked! If she was right, the city of Lhasa was now flooded with tens of thousands of people from all over the world, all feeling the same Vitiatum hangover she was currently feeling.

The four people in the cage with her were crying and hugging, grateful to be alive, and probably not entirely clear on what had happened. The guards outside the cage (though two Buddhist monks with kitchen mallets could hardly be considered _guards_) were staring at them with wonder. Martha approached the bars.

"Can you let us out now?" she asked.

"Wha-?" one of them said.

"I know, eh? All better now. Let us out?"

The two mallet monks looked at each other. "What happened?"

"No idea," she lied.

One of them eyed her with suspicion. "Who are you?"

"I'm Martha Jones."

"How did you get here?"

"I came up on a motorbike looking for Lobsang Samten."

"Where are you from?"

"London."

"Where did you learn to speak Tibetan?"

"Er... Oxford?"

"Mm," he grunted.

She thought about this. It was a good sign. It meant that out there somewhere, the TARDIS was still protecting her, probing her mind, and that the Doctor was also nearby. Locked in his bedroom, chained to the bed, without the sonic. Blimey.

They looked behind her and began asking some similar questions of the two brother monks and their mum and dad. When they were quite satisfied that the lot in the cage were safe, they unlocked the gate. Martha saw her coat lying on a table nearby.

_Couldn't have been in that cage for very long_, she thought. _They've still got my things thrown aside_.

And to her relief, next to the coat, were her mobile phone and the sonic screwdriver. She smiled at the thought of the monks going through her pockets, wondering what in the hell that thing was. And though she couldn't locate the psychic paper or her wallet, she took her coat and the sonic, thanked the monks and left. She retraced her steps back down the hill, praying that the motorbike would still be there.

* * *

Lobsang Samten watched from the stage as families, newly cured, left the town centre. They all gravitated toward the exits, except for four people. Martha Jones' family was walking up the steps toward him. He turned and bowed, and then searched for Chogyal Jinpa or the Chinese woman. He couldn't find them, so he motioned for the Jones family to follow him to the area behind the stage. Then, he motioned for them to wait just one minute. As the monk disappeared into a small crowd of people, Tish leaned against a blue British police box.

"This is weird," she said, looking up at it.

"Yeah," Leo commented. "Wonder what it's doing here."

"I haven't seen one of those in ages," Clive said. "I wonder if it's real or a replica."

In her pocket, Francine's mobile phone rang. She nearly collapsed with relief when Martha's number came up on the display. She threw the phone open and said, "Sweetheart?"

"Yes, mum," Martha answered. "How are you?"

"We're fine, what about you?"

"Better," she said. "I was sick, did you know?"

"Yes, the whole planet knows," Francine said, crying again. "That monk broadcast a picture of our family all over the world."

"Oh my God," Martha said. "That's where my wallet went! He must have taken it for the photo!"

"I wondered where he got the photos."

"Photos, plural?"

"Honey, where are you?" she asked, ignoring Martha's question.

"I'm on the hill, coming down. I'll have to let you go in a moment because I have to drive into town on a motorbike, and it's like trying to steer a tank."

"Well, we'll meet you in the city centre, there's a huge stage here. We're behind it with the crew and the monks."

"You're in Lhasa?" asked Martha, incredulous. "You actually came? You and dad and Leo and Tish?"

"Of course, dear. When we heard... we..."

"How long has it been?"

"You and I just talked not two days ago," her mother told her. "Oh, come down, Martha. I miss you. I have to know you're safe!"

"Okay," Martha said, smiling. "I'll be there in a bit. Just sit tight. I have a stop to make first."

"All right. I love you."

"I think it's safe to say I love you, too."

They ended the call, and Francine sat down on a step with exhaustion. The world could end tomorrow, but she could die happy because all three of her children were safe. At least for the moment.

"She's all right, then?" asked Clive, eyes wide.

"Yes, she seems fine, thank goodness," Francine said.

"I wonder where the Doctor is," Tish said, leaning one foot against the police box.

* * *

Martha took the trip down, naturally, a lot faster than she had taken the trip up. She wasn't exactly sailing around corners still, but she was a bit less tentative on the motorbike than she had been before. It was downhill, she was anxious to see her family, and she was positively dying to get back to the Doctor.

When she came around one of the last road bends and could see the centre beneath on her right, she saw what her mother had meant. She saw the large stage, room for a huge crowd, and people moving about the town. She hadn't expected this – when she told Lobsang Samten to go on television and ask people to concentrate their love upon Lhasa, she had thought there would be a pilgrimage yes, but not a media event! And not in the space of twenty-four hours! But, she supposed, once the television executives had got involved...

And what the hell was on the giant screen? It couldn't be what she thought it was... oh, but it was. It was a larger-than-life photo of herself and the Doctor, oddly, taken on a completely different planet. She wondered if anyone in the crowd had noticed that the mountains in the background were actually silver. The memory choked her up a bit, and forced her to press harder to get to the bottom of the mountain road – less than a mile now.

And then, looking down, she realised that they must have parked that stage right on top of the TARDIS. She knew that the thing was designed to "blend in," but she hoped it wouldn't blend in so much that they'd have built over it or crushed it in the process. No way – the TARDIS was still translating for her, so it was safe. But it must have moved. She wondered if they used a forklift, or if they'd got several large men to carry it. She wondered if she'd go back inside and find the Doctor's hammers strewn over the floor, and his coat spread out over the controls.

When she arrived at the side of the stage, she saw that the TARDIS had been moved perhaps 100 feet to the left. Her heart leapt, and she gave a great sigh of relief. As she left the motorbike behind in exchange for her own two feet, she realised that her family was probably nearby, since her mum had told her they were backstage.

And sure enough, as she came to a bridge over an artificial garden on her way down, she saw them, speaking with Lobsang Samten via an interpreter, and Tish was leaning on the TARDIS! Oh, this would be fun to explain.

"Martha!" her mother's voice rang out. "Oh, sweetheart!"

Francine ran up some steps to be with her daughter, and embraced her, nearly knocking them both off their feet. The rest of the Joneses followed, and Martha found herself in the middle of a big hug sandwich, and barely able to breathe.

"Lack of oxygen... becoming an issue," she croaked.

When they stepped away from her, she saw Lobsang Samten at the bottom of the stairs, looking up. She smiled at him and bowed her head in thanks. He bowed back, and then seemed to disappear into a group of people.

"Welcome back, Martha," Tish said, kissing her on the cheek.

"Thanks," she said. "But you guys didn't have to come all the way here."

"Of course we did," her father told her. "How could we stay at home once we knew where you were and what was happening? But how did that monk know what to do?"

"I told him," she said. "I knew what to do, with a little help from the Doctor."

"Of course you did," Francine conceded, almost condescendingly running her hands through her daughter's hair. She didn't seem to be able to take her eyes off Martha, as though if she looked away, Martha would disappear again.

Martha looked past her family and fixed her eyes on the blue box. "Say, what's that doing here?" she asked, a tad tongue-in-cheek.

"We were wondering that," her dad said, as they all made their way slowly down the stairs. "It's a bit incongruous, isn't it?"

"To say the least," Martha replied. "What do you say we find out what's inside?"

"Why?" asked Tish. "It's probably just a replica anyway."

"Or we'll get lucky and find the skeleton of some old criminal that was forgotten about back in the 60's," Leo offered. He was awarded a punch on the arm for his trouble.

Martha approached the TARDIS and pushed on the door. "Hmm," she said. "Locked. Let's try this." She extracted a piece of string from under her shirt and pulled until a little key popped out. She leaned down and unlocked the door, feigning surprise that it actually worked. She pushed the door open and stepped inside and up the ramp.

Her family followed, each one of them displaying the appropriate awe, and she remembered the first time she'd been inside and felt sure she must have been dreaming. She watched them with amusement, and waited for them to realise that she knew what she was doing.

"Martha?" her sister asked.

Martha just smiled. "The Doctor's locked in the bedroom. I'll be back in a minute."

As soon as she was out of earshot, Tish said, "From the bedroom? After twenty-four hours of life-or-death peril? Try an hour or three."

Leo chuckled. "Yeah, you can say that again."

"Both of you! Stop it!" Francine scolded.

"What _the hell_ is this?" Clive asked, looking about with utter astonishment.

* * *

The Doctor had tried several things. He knew it was useless to pull at the cuffs – they had been sonic locked. But he had tried telepathy with the TARDIS, using Zen meditation to press his bones together, breaking the headboard... but the fact was, without the sonic and at least one hand free, he was stuck until Martha came back for him. He hoped she'd be quick. He tried to occupy his mind with naming all of the eight hundred and twenty-six moons orbiting around the planet Rethona Kirbb. Some of them had seventeen-syllable names, and so it was not as easy a task as it sounded.

It was less than an hour before he felt the TARDIS tell him she was back. He heard the beautiful, familiar sonic hum outside of the door, and then she was there. She let the door close behind her, and smiled _that smile_. She sauntered close to the bed where he was lying, and her smile turned to a smirk. She took the sonic screwdriver from her pocket and showed it to him.

"I don't know if I want to let you out of those cuffs just yet," she said. "I think I rather like them – they suit you."

"D'you think?" he asked.

"Mm," she said. She crawled on top of him and straddled him at the waist. She leaned down and kissed him, hard, both of them moaning just a bit at the catharsis, her hands gripping at his hair and her tongue pushing adamantly into his mouth.

When she pulled away, they were both panting. After staring at each other for a few long seconds, the Doctor said, "Let me out of these things. Please."

She obliged, and immediately he sat up and put his arms around her, and they put their lips back in place. He pushed her coat off frantically over her arms and threw it aside, and she did the same to him. He turned her over on the bed and pulled her shoes off her feet, and pulled her jeans off her body. She kicked off her own knickers as he freed himself, once again, from the zipper holding the pinstripes together. In one desperate thrust, he was inside her, and they were lost. In two breathless, sweaty, hysterical minutes, they both exploded with yet more anxiety and frustration and tension and fear, and a calmness came over them.

"Let's not leave this room for a month," he panted, staring at the ceiling. "We'll go park at the edge of an uninhabited galaxy and just..."

She laughed. "Sounds tempting. But you know what happens every time we try to have a holiday."

"Yeah," he sighed. "Death, mayhem, apocalypse. But don't think that means I'm done with you."

"Oh no," she said. "You still owe me for that little bet."

He smiled wickedly. "Yes. I think you're in for a long, _long_ night..." he moved between her legs, and down.

"Oh my God!" she sat upright. "My family's here! They're waiting in the console room!"

"They're _where_?"


	23. Chapter 23

**THIS IS THE FINAL CHAPTER, MES ENFANTS. THANK YOU FOR STAYING ABOARD! THIS HAS BEEN AN INTERESTING WRITING EXPERIENCE AND I'M GLAD YOU ALL WERE ABLE TO SHARE IT WITH ME!**

* * *

TWENTY-THREE

"Hel-lo Jones family!" the Doctor cried out, making a grand entrance into the console room, with Martha in tow.

Noticing that Martha had re-tied her hair, Tish cleared her throat and muttered to Leo, "Well, that was quick." He sniggered.

The Doctor dashed right up to Leo, Tish and Francine, called them by name, shook their hands vigourously.

"Clive Jones," said Martha's father as he stuck his hand out grumpily. "And who might you be?"

"I'm the Doctor," the Doctor said.

Clive looked at Francine questioningly. "That's all he _ever_ tells us, just get used to it," she told him.

"Now, then," the Doctor announced. "What can we do about getting you folks home?"

"I suppose we should think about booking a return ticket," Francine said. She looked at Martha. "We weren't sure how long we'd be here."

"Aaagh, why bother, right Martha?"

"Right, Doctor."

"Up and away," he said, raising an eyebrow and throwing some of the controls on the console.

The TARDIS' gears ground and wheezed, and then came to a halt.

Martha smiled at her family. Her dad asked, once more, "What the hell was that?"

"Look outside," she told them.

They all glanced at each other, and finally it was Tish who went to the door. She opened it and gasped. "Oh my God!"

"What? What is it?" asked Francine, rushing to her side.

"We're home!"

"What do you mean, we're home?"

Leo and Clive made their way to the door as well, and each gasped in turn as they stepped outside. "It's London! We were just in Tibet, now we're in London! How the hell...?"

Tish stuck her head back inside and said, "Martha, you have to come out here!" Martha and the Doctor looked at each other with knowing smiles. They linked hands and walked down the ramp, and out the door.

Francine turned to them and said, "You two are coming in for dinner, and we are going to have a chat, yeah?" But it wasn't really a question.

The Doctor held his breath uncomfortably, while Martha said, "All right, mum. We'll chat."

He exhaled and agreed, "Yes. Yes, lovely."

Francine's eyes narrowed. "Good."

* * *

"What's wrong?" asked Martha. The Doctor was staring at the bedroom ceiling, arms propped behind his head, his brow furrowed. She was lying on her side under the sheet with her head in her hand. It was one of their afterwards-and-in-between moments, when they had their most fun discussions.

"Hm? Oh, nothing," the Doctor replied. "Just... dinner."

She giggled and lay her head on his chest. "Bit much, was it?"

"It was all very, very human."

"Well, we coudn't tell them outright that you're an alien, Doctor. That would have been a disaster."

"But did we have to invent a whole childhood and career history? And Martha," he squeaked, sitting up. "Why on Earth would anyone want to work as a bellhop?"

"You were putting yourself through medical school," she justified, sitting up as well. "Come on, you did what you had to. Your parents were dead and the family trust had been drained by your alcoholic uncle who blew it all at the dog track, so what choice did you have?"

He stared at her deadpan.

"People have histories, Doctor!"

"Can't I just be mysterious and enigmatic? I mean, do we have to give your family the metal image of me dressed as a bellhop?"

Martha started laughing heartily.

"Stop it!" he demanded.

"But at least I gave you Cambridge," she offered, as she pulled her giggling under control.

"Well, I'd have preferred the Sorbonne, but okay."

"My mum is fluent in French," she said. "She'd have made you speak, and she's a complete snob about it."

"Martha, I speak over a million languages. I can handle French."

"Whatever. Maybe next time we'll tell her that you spent time as an associate professor there, okay?"

He smiled. "Ooh, I like that."

They both lay down once more. "Anyway, honestly," she sighed. "I'm not sure they bought any of it."

"What makes you say that?"

"Er, we dematerialised in Tibet and five seconds later arrived in London. In a police box. With infinite interior space. I think they've worked out at this stage that you're not exactly an average bloke."

"I can act like one. I did all right tonight, didn't I?"

"Please, you might as well have _I'm not an average bloke_ tattooed on your forehead. And you only did all right tonight because I did all the talking."

"You really, really did."

"I'm very inventive," she said, feigning arrogance.

"Multi-talented," he agreed. After a beat, he asked, "Martha? What happened? I mean, in Lhasa, after I went out of the game?"

"I cried. I panicked. I entertained cross-dressing."

"Excuse me?"

"I thought if I wore your clothes I would think like you."

"What?"

"I know."

"Okay, what happened after that?"

"I went for a walk, and I started thinking about the Rachnoss. I understood what you were trying to do by throwing off the balance of the elements – turning love to hate by sledgehammering a temple. But then I realised that the Rachnoss were foiled by an imbalance of the elements, which amounted to an _inundation_ of water."

He nodded, a bit sullen, guilty.

She continued. "I thought, I'm sorry to say, that your logic was wrong. Flawed. It's not turning an element on its ear that would do the trick, it's flooding the place with it."

"That's brilliant," he said. "I'm sorry I didn't think of it."

"Thank you. So I went looking for Lobsang Samten, figuring he was a forward-thinking monk, and rang the BBC. In order to convince him to do a public address to the world on television, I had to talk about _you_, which of course caused me to lose my mind with Mad Red because I'm so _bloody_ in love with you. So he threw me in a cage and climbed into a news van."

"What the hell did he say that convinced twenty thousand people to gather in Tibet on twenty-four hours' notice?"

"I'm not sure it's what he said, just the way he said it. I haven't seen it yet, but apparently we can Youtube it."

"Okay, so who set up the stage and all that?"

"The BBC. They did it as a publicity stunt, of course, which turned out to be a good thing because if we just waited for people to spontaneously love each other, it might have taken longer."

"So he envoked love on a stage in front of twenty thousand?"

"Yes, apparently."

"And everyone went all Mad Red, didn't they?"

"According to my mum, yes. And then all of the Mad Red cases across the world went into convulsions. I assume my family was afflicted too – my mum only knows because Lobsang Samten spoke to my family for a bit. Can Buddhist monks really see across the world?"

The Doctor sighed. "Some say they can. It's all part of their belief that we come from the same consciousness, and they're not wrong. They claim that if they go into deep meditation, they can see everything in the universe for short bits of time."

"Because he told my mum that he could see across the world, and that the convulsions were happening everywhere, not just in Lhasa. He said he could see a malevolent cloud forming, and when it became too dense..."

"It turned in on itself."

"Yes," Martha said. "Exactly. I know it's part of Eastern Philosophy – and Western, if you look deeply enough. But it also turned out to be true."

"Well, it's much less philosophical and more physical. Don't let us forget what actually caused all of this – the elements. They were out of balance, and the Rachnoss' drug lost its hold."

"Well you know," she smiled. "To-_may_-to, to-_mah_-to."

"Are you mocking my scientific approach?"

"Nope," she promised. "Just being human."

He smiled and turned over to kiss her forehead. He rested his head on his fist and looked down at her. "Thank you, Martha. You've saved me again."

"Right back at'cha."

"And thank you for making me talk," he said. "It had been... oh, far too long. I'd learned to bury those memories so deep, they were rotting."

"I'm a little ashamed of the way I acted up on the mountain," she confessed. "But I'm glad that some good came of it."

"Oh, in the long-run, everything good came of it. Martha, you have touched places in me that I never knew existed. My family, my children – they're gone, and they only live on in me now. I'd never learned how to tap those places before, how to live with them as part of me as an organism. I had tried to put them in a lock box of some sort..."

"I know what you mean."

"I think you do. But can _you_ live with them?" he wanted to know.

"What would you do if I said no?"

"I don't know, actually."

"I'll admit," she said. "I was surprised. It never even occurred to me that you'd have children. I would never put you in the role of a father – it just doesn't fit with who you are to me. But how can I live with you if I can't handle your past? I'm competing with nine hundred plus years – I'll have to like it or lump it."

"You'd never put me in the role of a father?" he asked. He spoke with a bit of resentment.

It took her a moment to realise what he was asking her, and why he seemed so hurt. "Oh! I didn't mean _that_," she said, sheepishly. "Of course I would... I mean, if ever... I would love... I'm saying this all wrong."

"No, it's okay. I'm just surprised you'd never thought about it."

"Me too," she said, truthfully.

"I'd always heard that human women began picking out wallpaper for the nursery on the third date."

"It's been a while since you've dated a human woman," she pointed out, rolling her eyes a bit.

"Clearly," he agreed, with a playful smile.

She sighed. "Thinking about it _now_, does that count for something?"

"Of course," he whispered, kissing her forehead again.

And then she asked, "Is it even possible?"

"Yes," he said. "It's happened before. It's a bit dangerous, but it's possible."

"Wow. Are the offspring viable?"

"What, you mean, do they have to be sterile like mules?"

"Well, yeah. Plenty of species can cross-breed, but the offspring are usually non-viable."

"As far as I know, they're viable, but I couldn't swear to it."

"Wow," she said again.

"Well," he sighed. "Hate to change the subject on you, but tomorrow, we'd better go down to the Rachnoss' ship and deactivate everything. Are you up for that?"

"Sure."

"We can't risk having this Vitiatum leak happen again. Something tells me that there won't be such an outpouring of emotion the second time around, and we still don't have an antidote."

"So, we're going to the centre of the Earth?"

"Yep."

"That's brilliant!"

"But now that we've made plans for tomorrow, the question remains, what do we do with the rest of our night?"

That, of course, was a question that neither of them ever needed ask again.

**END**


End file.
